Artist’s impression of the development and ‘Bendigo’ Thompson, inset (Photo: Franklin Ellis)
A towering Nottingham office block is getting a £20m makeover to become a huge apartment complex named after a local legend.
The building at 1 Brook Street will complete a dramatic overhaul for part of Sneinton which has seen Marco Island, Victoria Hall and the Litmus Building spring up within a quarter of a mile of each other.
Developer Emma Property Management wants to turn the Brook Street site into 101 apartments with a new building façade and internal garden.
The company submitted a planning application through Franklin Ellis architects, which was approved by Nottingham City Council on Wednesday.
Video: What local people make of the redevelopment
The building is a former parcel sorting office, with the ground floor home to Hertz car rental company.
The rest of the site is empty and is one of the area’s last remaining outdated tower blocks after a decade of investment in property schemes near Sneinton Market.
Emma Property Management director Ken Grundy said he was planning to call the project the Bendigo Building in honour of William ‘Bendigo’ Thompson, the Sneinton bare-knuckle boxing champion who died in 1880.
Thompson is buried in St Mary’s Rest Garden, Bath Street, which is overlooked by the building.
The current building on Brook Street is empty except for a car rental firm
“The idea is to give it a softer edge and it is for community living, hopefully it will attract graduates who want to stay in Nottingham,” said Mr Grundy.
“It was originally part of a Parcel Force building and Hertz will stay there under their lease until September next year, unless we can work something out, in which case the plan is to start work in June next year and finish in Autumn 2019.”
The plans also include a cafe and crèche on Bath Street and an internal garden on the ground floor.
Born in Sneinton in 1811, William Thompson, known as Bendigo, was a prize fighter who travelled the country drawing crowds of up to 10,000 to his fights.
A campaign was set up in January to raise money for a new statue of him to replace an ageing one currently above the Zam Zam restaurant, the former Bendigo pub, on Sneinton Hollows.
