Broad construction
Fifteen years ago Birmingham's Broad Street was about the last place a hotel guest would look for a room: an unappealing hotchpotch of scruffy shops and offices tucked behind the city's core.
These days, however, it is a different story. The street has grown into the hub of Birmingham's night-life, lined with fashionable bars and restaurants, and it is also the home to plush new office development Brindleyplace.
Unsurpisingly, the hotel industry has moved into the street alongside these other businesses, seizing the opportunity offered by Birmingham's burgeoning conference and entertainment market. The city centre now boasts venues such as the International Convention Centre (ICC), which opened in 1991, and attractions ranging from the National Indoor Arena to Symphony Hall and the National Sea Life Centre, which opened in summer 1996.
Not only that, but Broad Street's hotels are increasingly mopping up the spillover from the NEC, located near the city's airport, which is to undergo a £60m expansion next year. The airport brings in increasing numbers of guests, with £260m to be spent on its extension by 2000.
Frequently, NEC visitors are making Broad Street their first choice to stay as they hear about its buzzing bars and eateries. "Quite frankly, there is not a great deal to do around the NEC after dinner and a few beers at your hotel. You are probably better off being in Broad Street where there are loads of bars and night-clubs," says Jeremy Hill, corporate hotel director at valuer and surveyor Christie & Co.
Several of Birmingham's highest quality hotels are already focused in and around the street. These include the four-star, 319-room Hyatt Regency Hotel, which links to the ICC on Centenary Square; the four-star, 212-room Copthorne, at Paradise Circus; the three-star, 148-room Novotel, at 70 Broad Street; and the five-star, 98-room Swallow Hotel, just across from Broad Street on Hagley Street.
Indeed, with 4,200 hotel rooms, Birmingham is England's second largest centre of accommodation, behind London only. But local hoteliers and business people claim there is still plenty of room for growth, particularly for hotels offering a broader range of accommodation in a wider price range.
"There are dogfights for hotel rooms. There simply isn't enough accommodation in keeping with the influx of conference guests. And Broad Street is the place to be," says Andrew Boyd, deputy general manager of the Swallow Hotel.
A number of projects in the pipeline should help boost this flagging room count.
Perhaps the biggest of the bunch involves not a new hotel, but the relocation of an existing one. Carlton Communications and Hampton Trust plan to revamp the former Central TV site, creating a £200m leisure complex totalling 132,104sq m to be known as Centenary Square. The proposals involve resiting the city's four-star, 284-room Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza hotel into a swish new tower block.
"The Holiday Inn is not as modern as it might be. And it is short on conference and meeting facilities," says Julian Shellard, of Richard Ellis, the development consultants on the scheme. He adds that the new hotel, at 300-400 rooms, may be larger than the existing one.
Until recently Broad Street's budget accommodation was severely limited. But a couple of recent office-to-hotel conversions are helping to bridge the gap.
In March this year Granada opened a 136-room Travelodge as part of its £30m UK-wide city-centre strategy. It acquired an eight-storey, 4,907sq m, former 1960s office block at 230 Broad Street for £2m from Cirrus Properties, with its total investment in the project believed to be £4m.
Meanwhile, planning consent has now been granted to local firm Chamberlain Hotels to convert BT's 204,380sq m Berkley House into a 445-room hotel. The building was acquired for £4.5m, while the total scheme is expected to cost around £12m. The hotel will offer quality accommodation and meeting facilities for £50 per night including breakfast, achieving this budget price by offering no room service.
"There is certainly demand for budget rooms in this price range," says Richard Nicol, managing director of Chamberlain.
Elsewhere on the street, Scottish & Newcastle has acquired a 1.7-acre site at the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital, which it plans to turn into lodge accommodation.
This new wave of lodges will help soak up Birmingham's budget demand, but there is still room for another five-star property in the area. This is likely to be located opposite Broad Street at Centenary Square, in the 10,487sq m Baskerville House, a grand 1930s civic building owned and occupied by Birmingham City Council and currently up for grabs for use as top-quality hotel space.
The council is offering a lease of 250 years at a peppercorn rent to tempt an investor or hotel owner-operator.
Few locals feel that all this hectic activity will overload the market. "There's definitely a shortage of rooms, so the more the merrier," says Swallow Hotel's Boyd.
The only words of caution came earlier this year from Roddy Gordon, a director of the Hyatt Regency. He warned that Birmingham's spiralling upmarket hotel accommodation could prove unsustainable because the city is still not regarded a natural leisure destination for weekend travellers.
But the situation may ultimately regulate itself naturally because there are few left-over opportunities, according to Christie & Co's Hill. Only some smaller-scale conversions may still be possible.
So far, £500m of investments by the private and public sector has been pumped into Broad Street's regeneration and this is set to approach £1b by the millennium, according to Alan Chatham, head of the Broad Street Association and director of Brindleyplace.
But Peter Jones, assistant director of Birmingham City Council's estates division, puts the street's runaway success down to more than just money. "I think it all comes down to the move by the city council to lower the ring road - the concrete collar, as we call it - about seven years ago," he says.
"This allowed pedestrian access through the new public squares, so people could move through the shopping centre, through public building areas, round the library, link through to the ICC and go out along Broad Street," he explains.
Now the street's position at the centre of Birmingham's leisure and hotel industry looks unlikely to falter.
Next week: High Holborn in London
