Focus Consultants has been appointed as quantity surveyors on a £5.5m project to restore Coventry’s Grade II* listed Drapers’ Hall in time for the city being UK City of Culture in 2021.
The building in the heart of the Cathedral Quarter will be used as a centre for educating young musicians from Coventry schools and for the performance of professional classical music.
The project is being led by Historic Coventry Trust and managed by The Prince’s Foundation. The development of Drapers’ Hall represents one of The Prince’s Foundation’s 7 for 70 projects announced in 2018 to coincide with The Prince of Wales’s 70th birthday. The Prince’s Foundation launched the initiative to identify and undertake seven high-impact community regeneration projects throughout the United Kingdom. The charity’s president His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales visited Drapers’ Hall in January.
“The restoration of Drapers’ Hall is a high-profile project, and Focus Consultants is delighted to be playing a part in giving this wonderful building a new lease of life,” said Sean Smith,senior quantity surveyor at Focus Consultants. “This will be a sensitive and sympathetic restoration of an historic building – completed in time for Coventry’s City of Culture year in 2021. That it is one of The Prince’s Foundation’s 7 for 70 projects makes it even more special.”
A sympathetic new extension to the rear, in the Regency style of the existing building, will provide additional space for main occupier Coventry Music Service.
The building, which dates from 1832 and was once the headquarters of Coventry’s Worshipful Company of Drapers, has been dormant for the past 20 years, but work is due to start later this year following extensive archaeological investigations at this sensitive site in the heart of the Medieval city.
Focus Consultants, which is based in Nottingham and has branches in London, Leicester, Newark and Boston, provides a range of consultancy services to the property and construction industry, including building surveying, project management and sustainable development support.
For more information, visit www.focus-consultants.com
