Buyer identified for former Central Library building

Nottingham’s former Central Library could finally be on the verge of being sold, TheBusinessDesk.com understands.

An offer from unnamed “established developer/operator” has been secured and a sale could go through “quickly” if Nottingham City Council’s executive board votes through the recommendations next Tuesday (June 18).

If the deal goes through it will bring to end a long-running saga for the building that has been derelict since the first Covid lockdown in march 2020. The most recent plans for the Angel Row site involved transforming the building into a flexible workspace for creative businesses – but this was never progressed.

The site was openly marketed in 2020 and 2021 with a number of offers received from student developers who wanted to turn the library into a student accommodation scheme of between 4-500 beds and included a lease back of the former library frontage which was to be used for the Future High Street Funding project. A buyer was selected and a “significant” amount of due diligence and legal work was undertaken until the purchaser was found to be unable to fund the development and the agreement to sell the site was terminated in Spring 2023.

Neither the name of the new buyer nor the price has been disclosed by Nottingham City Council, which says it has so far had to spend £162,000 in void rates for the empty building.