Coventry’s newest historical visitor attraction is opening to the public for the first time this year on Sunday 8th June between 11.00am and 4.00pm. The Weaver’s House and Tudor Garden give a realistic glimpse at Coventry live in the 16th Century. There will be various attraction including demonstrations of weaving and candle making and activities for children.   more

Despite choosing to accommodate a larger proportion of new houses and flats than any of the other big urban areas in the region, Coventry is waiting to see if the Government will force it to make room for still more. The figure of 33,500 new homes to be built in the city by 2026 was submitted to the Government as part of the Regional Spatial Strategy Phase 2 Revision. But now Planning Minister Baroness Andrews wants the West Midlands to build more homes and has commissioned consultants to work out where they are all going to go.   more

The debate over the future of the Ring Road has raged for years. Undoubtedly it transformed the management of Coventry’s traffic yet it has been seen by many as an urban blight, an ugly barrier separating the outer neighbourhoods from the city centre. Now, Mike Tovey, Coventry University’s Director of Design, has joined forces with Marion Doyen and David Moorcroft, to suggest ways in which the Ring Road might be transformed. In a presentation he gave to members at the Annual General Meeting there were interesting ideas, a challenge for discussion and debate.   more

Today top architects from London and Los Angeles are redesigning parts of Coventry City Centre and the City Council’s urban design team are trying to stitch it all together. 70 years ago it was very different… Long before the Blitz of 1940 highly influential architect Donald Gibson was already planning Coventry’s new centre. His idea to separate motor traffic and pedestrians was radical and would finally sweep away centuries old medieval streets. This first glimmering of a civic design came about in unusual circumstances. He later explained: “We worked unofficially on a plan for the central area; our wives joined in and it was more or less done on the carpet at home in the evenings.”   more

An international team of experts came to Coventry recently to take part in a symposium on the future of the city centre held at the Methodist Central Hall. Their message was that Coventry has a chance to be lively, attractive, safe, sustainable, healthy, legible and remarkable. They spoke to a gathering of around 50 people from the City Council, local organisations and institutions, academics and regional and national bodies with an interest in the built environment who had gathered for a ‘visioning symposium’ to consider an ‘urban design framework’ for the city centre. The delegates then went on walkabouts in the city centre to examine the themes of legibility, creating public spaces, character areas and density and reconciling people, places and traffic. Upon their return to central hall they discussed these themes and developed principles for the re-design of the city centre. There was a large degree of overlap between the ideas put forward by the four groups and we are pleased to report that most of the ideas that the delegates agreed on accorded with Coventry Society thinking.   more

Developers working for the Hilton Hotel group have presented revised plans for a new hotel to grace the delightful environment around the Ricoh Arena. The hotel, which will rise to eight storeys at the Rowleys Green roundabout, will be part of Hilton’s new budget ‘Hampton by Hilton’ chain. The new design, which was presented to the City Council’s development forum recently, replaces a previous scheme which was unanimously rejected by the planning committee last year. The new development will be situated across Phoenix Way from the Ricoh on a stretch of land between the road and the goods railway line which goes to Prologis Park (the former Coventry Colliery railway).   more

As the City Council extended its deadline for consultation on the redevelopment of the city centre, results from the 800+ citizens who have already responded show a clear desire to scrap Cathedral Lanes and its canopy. Cathedral Lanes was not originally included in the area to be redeveloped as part of the Jerde plan, but the strength of public opinion has forced a re-think and the detested shopping centre will now be up for redevelopment. Hundreds of local people have already told the Council what they want to see in a new Coventry city centre. And with responses still coming in thick and fast the deadline has been extended to by a week, to Monday 10 March, to ensure as many people as possible can be involved.   more

A well attended meeting of the Coventry Society in February heard Martin Yardley, Deputy Director of the City Council’s Development Directorate explain the thinking behind the plan to redevelop a large section of city centre. Mr Yardley explained that the reason for this radical proposal was that the city centre is underperforming, and the statistics certainly seem damning: Despite being the 11th largest city in the country Coventry has the 43rd best shopping centre. It has half the retail space of Nottingham and two-thirds of the shoppers of Leicester. Of 10 ‘peer cities’ (i.e. cities with a similar population) Coventry comes 10th for shopping. In 2005 retail spend in the city centre was £600m; estimated to be half of its potential.   more