Swanky hotel is all set to open in autumn
A DECLINE IN JANUARY PEAK
SITE BEING TRANSFORMED IN £17M PROJECT
WORK to transform the former Fenwick department store into a hotel is nearing completion.
The owners, Aimrok Holdings, bought the 19th century building in Market Street after it shut in spring 2017.
They are spending £17 million to transform it into a hotel with 121 serviced apartments plus a restaurant and gym, as well as four shop units, offices for new businesses and a meeting space.
The Grade II listed building will be known as The Gresham and the owners have said they expect it to open in the autumn.
Aimrock director Mark Copson said: “We are very pleased with the way the development is progressing. Despite the pandemic, we are managing to keep plans largely on track to launch in early autumn.
“It will be extremely high-class and every finish will be completed to the highest quality. The internal construction is 80 per cent of the way there and the interior designs are being finalised as we speak. It’s been an incredibly interesting project during testing times.
“Although from the outside it only appears to be four storeys high, one of our largest challenges has been the re-levelling of the floors where they have been changed and added to over the years.
“Those who remember the building as Fenwick’s might well believe there were over 25 different levels to painstakingly and carefully attend to, across eight buildings.
“The Gresham now has six ‘level’ floors – including a top deck which houses four units with spectacular, unparalleled views over the city, and we have added a light well from the roof to the first floor, allowing natural light to flow into the heart of the building.
“We purposely set out to make The Gresham different from anything else in Leicester. It is an iconic and loved building and it deserves a superior look and feel throughout to match – one I hope its original designer, Isaac Barradale, would have been proud of.”
The building work includes restructuring the inside and that work is now complete. There are just interior furnishing works that need to be completed. It is hoped the new development will be helpful as Leicester recovers from the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
Market Street has seen several other shops shut recently, including Newman’s cafe, Future Cycles, White Stuff, Bravissimo, Oxfam and Lumbers, which has moved to High Street.
Leicester City Council has committed £450,000 to the office scheme and the Leicester and Leicestershire Enterprise Partnership (LLEP) has agreed a £4 million package to help continue the regeneration of the area.
Speaking last year, the chairman of the LLEP board, Kevin Harris, said: “With the make-up of our high streets evolving, it is important that we plan new uses for some of our most cherished buildings.
“This development at the old Fenwick’s store will see one of Leicester’s architectural gems preserved and restored to public use, with high-quality apartments in a prime city centre location. The site will also provide more much-needed office space, with businesses, start-ups and freelancers able to make use of flexible
facilities.”
COVID wards are being switched back to their pre-peak status as the number of patients with the virus in the city and county’s hospitals continues to fall.
Areas in University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust (UHL) and Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust (LPT) sites were transformed to accommodate Covid positive patients as the NHS battled the latest wave.
With hospital admissions now falling slowly, wards are reverting back to their normal use.
Rachna Vyas, executive director of integration and transformation at the city, county and Rutland’s CCGs, said: “We are restoring a heap of wards now that were Covid positive to Covid negative and the important thing about realigning wards from medicine back to surgery is that it will allow us to start work on category one and two patients who are elective care, and cancer patients as well.”
Giving an update on the current Covid situation to CCG colleagues, Ms Vyas said: “We have had a pronounced decline in infection rates and hospital admissions for Covid since the January peak.
“However, our non-Covid admissions are beginning to rise so we are now seeing patients who are not in for Covidrelated reasons being admitted. The admission rate has effectively stayed at a very similar level.”
During the first spike in April there were just over 200 Covid positive patients cared for by the trust, in the most recent wave there were 500. Latest figures show the number is now back at around 200.
Intensive care numbers in UHL remain high with units operating at 124 per cent of normal capacity - but this is in part to patients from other parts of the country being treated in Glenfield hospital’s specialist Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) unit.
The health service across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland, stepped down from level five alert status to level four at the start of the month.
Across the county, the CCGs are working with district councils in some areas of concern, where infection rates are higher than the national average.
Ms Vyas said: “There has been a steady reduction in the incidence rates across the patch but there are some areas that are still above the national and local average.
“We are worried about one or two areas and we are working with district councils in those areas to make sure there are plans in place for those populations.”
She added that while there has been a reduction in care home outbreaks, there is still a “significant” number experiencing outbreaks.
“We are doing another round of infection prevention and control advice for our care homes and teams are contacting them,” she said.
Non-Covid admissions rising so we are now seeing patients not in for Covid-related reasons Rachna Vyas