City Temple Quarter, Holborn Viaduct
London
A truly exciting and unique mixed – use scheme, combining a new high-quality hotel and the adaptive use and enhancement of the heritage asset at the Grade II Listed City Temple Church
Planning Resolution have secured planning and listed building consent for a new high-quality hotel in the City of London, designed by Eric Parry Architects, with the adaptation of the heritage asset that is the adjacent Grade II listed City Temple Church for agile / flexible B1 workspace that enables refurbishment and enhancement of the remained of the Church – a truly exciting mixed – use scheme.
In giving their unanimous support Members at Committee acknowledged that the City Temple Quarter development will play a key role in the ‘Cultural Quarter’ – offering a unique and truly mixed use development comprising high-quality 191-bed hotel and the introduction of agile affordable workspace in under-utilised Church space, in-turn providing the ‘enabling development’ for the refurbishment and enhancement of the Grade II listed City Temple Church to enable it to continue to provide a place for ministerial purposes, quiet reflection, social/community inter-action within the City – as it has historically done so.
The ‘Culture Mile’ is an initiative to create a cultural destination in the heart of the City, centered around the new Museum of London at West Smithfield, a proposed concert hall for the London Symphony Orchestra and a transformation of Beech Street, the tunnel that runs under the Barbican, facilitated by the scheduled opening of Crossrail stations at Farringdon and Moorgate in December 2018, making it easier and quicker to travel into the City.
This project comprises a unique hotel and heritage development, with strong viability justification required in the face of a robust office safeguarding planning policy, and a complex ecclesiastical exemption process for the associated refurbishment of the listed City Temple.
The siting of the hotel next to the European headquarters of a Global Bank, has required extensive discussions and refining of the detail of servicing and delivery regime.
