Developing the city centre
Major improvements have been taking place to Coventry City Centre, including the improvements to Coventry Railway Station, and associated city centre public realm works. These will play a key role in helping to accelerate the development of new commercial sites, attract new private sector investment into Coventry, and increase footfall for city-centre retailers. In total, across Coventry and Warwickshire, Growth Deal funding will enable the creation of 13,326 indirect jobs, 5,311 new apprentices, 6,957 homes and the unlocking of 1,062,169 m2 of commercial space.
Delivering the new boutique hotel on the Friargate Boulevard
One of the Council’s key corporate priorities is the realisation of high-quality new hotels within the city to support its economic development,inward investment, and visitor economy ambitions. In August 2019, Cabinet agreed the key terms of a deal with Castlebridge that will result in a 100-bed Hotel Indigo being delivered in the Friargate business district which is anticipated to be open during 2021. As well as being a fantastic new hotel in its own right (alongside a high-quality restaurant and bar open to the general public), the hotel will play a key role in enhancing the city’s reputation, be a catalyst for the wider Friargate scheme and provide approximately 40 permanent jobs.
Delivering Two Friargate
The Council is working with the Friargate Joint Venture to realise the delivery of the next commercial office building within the Friargate business district, Two Friargate. Two Friargate has received planning consent and will provide 134,000 square feet of high-quality commercial office space that will play an important part in the Council delivering its economic development and inward investment objectives for the city. Working with the joint venture, the detailed stages of technical design and procurement preparation are well underway with a start on site expected for later in 2020. This funding is in addition to the £51.2m grant that the Council received from the West Midlands Combined Authority in 2018 to support the delivery of the first phase of Friargate. This second building would have 134,000 square feet of lettable, adaptable, state of the art office space which would be on par with the best the region has to offer. In addition to this office space, there will be space available on the ground for a café or restaurant to occupy - creating a vibrant space at ground level – accessible to the public. A second office building at Friargate is part of the wider plans to expand the Friargate development and to make it and the city an even more attractive place for businesses to invest in. It is estimated that the scheme will create 700 jobs during the construction phase of the scheme, with many more jobs created when the building is operational.
City Centre South
City Centre South is the Council’s key regeneration priority for the city centre and will transform seven hectares of the city through a new, mixed-use development scheme that will provide hundreds of new homes, a high-quality public realm environment and modern, forward-looking commercial, leisure and retail spaces. The Council has been working with its development partner, Shearer Property Group, in the preparation of a planning application for the scheme and it is anticipated that this will be submitted to the Council for consideration during 2020 following public consultation and engagement. One of the enabling projects for City Centre South, the demolition of Coventry Point, was completed in Autumn 2020.
City centre footfall
This year uses a slightly different period for 2019/20 to compare to the same period last year. The last few weeks were affected by the lockdown of the UK due to the coronavirus pandemic and this unduly affected footfall figures - if these weeks were included in the calculation we would not be able to judge how much of the fall in footfall has occurred before lockdown. The full effect of the pandemic will be seen in future footfall figures. Looking at the period from week 11 2019 to week 10 2020 (approximately March 2019 to February 2020), footfall across the whole of Coventry City Centre was 3.4% down compared to the same period last year. This compares to a 0% change last year so, while last year footfall was resilient in the face of negative trends on high streets elsewhere, Coventry footfall was this year on a deteriorating trend even before the pandemic hit. However, Coventry’s footfall change still compares favourably to a UK benchmark - other places for which we receive data showed a worse average footfall deterioration of -4.7% compared to 2018/19.
The city centre has been undergoing significant development in the public realm to improve the environment. During this time parts have been less accessible as barriers have been put up for periods of time, this may have negatively affected footfall. As it has in previous years, footfall in the evening has performed better than it has in the day time; total 2019/20 footfall between 7pm and 3am was 0.3% higher than it was in 2018/19.
Empty shop units small reduction in 2019
Despite footfall being at lower levels in 2019/20 compared to 2018/19 the number of empty shops was on a falling trend throughout 2019, reaching 46 empty units (1 in 8 retail units in the prime retail area of the city centre) at the end of 2019 (post-Xmas) compared to 48 at the same time in 2018 and 61 at the end of 2017.