page_title: Grand Hotel, Birmingham
section_title: Renovation
hierarchical_section_title: Grand Hotel, Birmingham / Renovation
caption_attribution_description: English: The Colmore Row frontage of the Grand Hotel, Birmingham, undergoing restoration works in November 2012.
context_page_description: The Grand Hotel is a Grade II* listed Victorian hotel in the city centre of Birmingham, England. The hotel occupies the greater part of a block bounded by Colmore Row, Church Street, Barwick Street and Livery Street and overlooks St Philip's Cathedral and churchyard. Designed by architect Thomson Plevins, construction began in 1875 and the hotel opened in 1879. Extensions and extensive interior renovations were undertaken by prominent Birmingham architecture firm Martin & Chamberlain from 1890 to 1895. Interior renovations included the building of the Grosvenor Room with Louis XIV style decoration.
  The hotel closed in 2002 and due to the risk of crumbling stonework it has been under scaffolding and protective covers since. In 2012 planning permission was granted for plans to restore the building into a luxury hotel. Works to the exterior began in October 2012 and it is planned to open the building as a hotel in 2020. In January 2020 it was announced the hotel would open in summer 2020, with 185 bedrooms, two new bars and a restaurant, a gymnasium, meeting rooms, collaboration areas, and event spaces.
context_section_description: After the hotel closed in August 2002, the building fell into disrepair and the poor quality stonework on the building's façade began to crumble. After some of the stonework fell onto the pavement in Colmore Row, the building was surrounded with scaffolding and protective covers to protect the public. Escalating maintenance costs led to the proposal by the owners to demolish the building in 2003. The proposal was dropped when the building was listed as a Grade II* listed building in 2004. The building then continued to lay vacant (except for the shops fronting Colmore Row) as the cost of repairing and restoring the building was deemed as too high or not even feasible due to the poor state of the exterior stonework. 
  In the summer of 2011, Arup Façade Engineering and Linford Group were appointed by Hortons' Estate at a cost of £1.5 million to find a solution to restore the façade. It was discovered that some of the stone was unsuitable for construction in the first place and was laid incorrectly. The restoration team formed a repair strategy and worked on a trial area on Church Street. The strategy comprised stripping all paint and render back to solid stone, replacing all failed stone and repainting with modern paint that allows water vapour to permeate through it.
  After the successful trial, £30 million proposals were drawn up and went on public consultation in January 2012 followed by a planning application in February 2012. The application outlined plans to transform the building into a 152-bedroom luxury hotel. The restoration would comprise remodeling the original 230 rooms into 152 air conditioned rooms, 8 new suites, with two new roof terraces in previously unused roof space, and nine new meeting rooms in the former stock rooms. Other elements include the creation of a terrace in the central courtyard, a hotel bar and restaurant accessed from Colmore Row, a standalone bar on the corner of Church Street and Barwick Street, a new main entrance on Church Street, and refurbished shops on Colmore Row based on a harmonised design and colour scheme. The stonework façades on Colmore Row and Church Street, the Grosvenor Suites and the grand staircase will be restored.
  The project team for the project is Hortons' Estate Ltd and architect Berman Guedes Stretton. On 26 April 2012, the planning application received unanimous backing from city councillors. The project began in October 2012 with a projected finishing date of summer 2014. The contract for the restoration of the façade was awarded to Midland Conservation Limited with the works expected to take 18 months. Restoration of the façade had an original budget of £3.5 million with 6% of the cost coming from a grant from English Heritage. However, due to problems during the tendering process for the interior building contract, no interior works were started. In October 2014 it was reported that an extra £4 million will be invested by the owners with £2.5 million spent on further facade refurbishment and a new roof and £1.5 million spent on refurbishing 10 shops fronting Colmore Row and 10,000 sq ft of office space within the building. A deal on the interior works with building contractors and a hotel operator was yet to be agreed.
  The project was awarded a £6 million grant in November 2015 from Birmingham City Council and the GBSLEP, of which £4 million will be repayable subject to commercial success of the hotel. The grant made the aspiration to return the building to hotel use financially viable with the owners reporting that talks were taking place with two hotel operators. In January 2020, it was announced by Starwood Capital Group that the hotel would open in summer 2020, following an extensive £45 million refurbishment. The restoration includes new penthouse suites, a sunken rooftop garden terrace, two new bars and a restaurant, a gymnasium, meeting rooms, collaboration areas, and event spaces.
caption: Under renovation in November 2012
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