£50 million Civic Centre revamp enters second stage

Top floor restaurant on the cards

A mammoth £50 million project to bring Plymouth’s iconic Civic Centre back to life is beginning to take shape.

Plymouth City Council has announced that internal and external construction works will begin following the recent removal of asbestos and the site being made safe.

Journalists were given a tour of the building, a symbol of the city’s post war construction, on Thursday and witnessed spectacular views from the top of the 14-storey structure.

A planning application is expected in around two weeks and follows a public consultation at the end of last year where residents gave mainly positive support to the plans to renovate the skyscraper which has laid dormant for over a decade.

Once the offices of the city council, the grade II listed Civic Centre, opened in 1962 by the late Queen, will enter a new era as a City College campus on the lower levels and 144 privately-rented flats above with the hope that a restaurant and bar can be created at the top with full public access if safety standards allow.

The project has seen an investment of £18.4 million from the government’s housing and regeneration agency Homes England and is part of plans to create 10,000 new homes in the city centre.

Other costs will be met by public sector pots including Future High Streets and Levelling Up funds and the city council plans to borrow £17 million to complete the shell and core works.

City centre champion  and the council’s cabinet member for finance Cllr Mark Lowry (Lab, Southway) said there had been a bit of a hiatus but now work would begin in earnest.

“The first thing people will see is the external panelling being taken off as it is past its sell by date now and replaced with a new set of panelling which will make the building look so much better than it is at the moment because it is a bit of an ugly ducking here today.

“The internal and external construction work will take around two years and then after that will be the fit out of City College as a blue/greens skills hub and we will see 2,000 students arriving each day to learn new trades.”

Fitting out the apartments will be the responsibility of a housing provider yet to be announced.

Cllr Lowry said it had been an almighty task just to get to the planning application stage.

 “We want to reassure the public that we are moving at pace and that a phenomenal amount of work is taking place behind the hoardings to get to this stage. 

“We stepped in to revive this building as we believe it is a hugely important landmark and a catalyst for wider regeneration. All the signals we are now getting show it was the right call.

“It is more than a restoration, it is about introducing city living, which chimes with the work we are about to embark on with the masterplanning for 10,000 new homes.”

He said surveys had been done to understand the “significant structural issues” of this complex building hence they needed to remove the external cladding and to make sure it complied with new taller building regulations which were introduced following the horrific tragedy at Grenfell. 

Sprinkler systems, new firefighting lifts and stair access have to be installed and all aspects of the building must comply with more stringent fire ratings. 

“These are incredibly important elements of this project,” the councillor said “We also hope to bring back the restaurant and bar, that has not been decided, but it is an aspiration going forward.”

He said he expected the cost to Plymouth City Council taxpayers would be around £10 million over the next five years.

“A lot of that will include some of the public realm works around the building and lower concourse,” he added.

The councillor said he knew not everyone loved the building but he hoped they would be proud of it in years to come and accept that the council had done the right thing.

Architect Mark Braund from leading designers for the project Building Design Partnership (BDP) said it was “almost indescribably exciting to be involved in a project like this because it is not just about bringing a building back to life but it is about transforming the city centre.

“It is a Modernist icon, identified by the 20th Century Society and Historic England as a building worth saving not just for the architecture but what it means socially. It’s a really unique project

“I think because people have fallen out of love with it it almost makes it even more exciting to show how it can be reloved by the city it once served. People used to queue up outside to go up to the 14th floor to the restaurant  – we want that same excitement again.”

BDP have been involved in high profile projects such as a restoration scheme at the Houses of Parliament, the Google headquarters in London, AstraZeneca complex in Cambridge and the new Everton football stadium.