Bruntwood plans hotel for Queen Insurance Buildings

PROPERTY group Bruntwood is planning to convert part of Liverpool’s Queen Insurance Buildings into a hotel.

The Manchester-based group has an unnamed hotel operator ready to take on around 30,000 sq ft of office space – just under half the site – which has not been occupied since law firm DWF left for St Paul’s Square around three years ago.

The grade II-listed buildings stretch across a large plot on the corner of Castle Street and Dale Street and include a Victorian shopping arcade. The hotel would occupy the upper floors on the Castle Street side.

Bruntwood director Colin Sinclair said: “We’re retaining some offices on floors not taken by the hotel and we’re very keen to maintain and enhance the retail offer in the avenue running through it, and we’re also looking at adding additional restaurant usage.”

The company has more than 100 buildings, mainly in the North and the Midlands, and its focus is on office space. But it has previously been involved in hotel schemes, such as the conversion of Hepworth Point in Leeds into a Premier Inn, and its partnership with Manchester University on a £60m hotel and conference centre at Manchester Business School.

Liverpool’s hotel market has seen rapid growth in recent years with the number of hotels increasing from 25 to 43 between 2005 and 2012. The number of rooms grew to 4,698 from 2,612 during this period and the rise of this market is seen as one way of utilising large amounts of vacant office space. But Mr Sinclair said Bruntwood was not pursuing the hotel plan for this reason.

He said: “We’ve got 11 buildings in Liverpool and enquiries have been up by 89% in the last six months. It’s pretty remarkable – we did 11 deals in the last week. We’re racing ahead on lettings in Liverpool now. We’ve got a lot of office developments in the pipeline and are confident about it. This particular space lends itself really well to being a hotel and there are other parts which are staying as offices so we’re not taking it out of the office market, just making it a really good mixed-use scheme.”

A planning application for change of use has just been submitted.