For Birmingham skyline

HERE’S another long-running project which had dropped off the radar before resurfacing towards the end of 2017.

The seven-storey Beneficial Building, in Paradise Circus Queensway, has become a redundant and largely vacant complex opposite the upmarket Mailbox mall.

Its most famous tenant was legendary Birmingham nightclub Snobs that shut in September 2014 after finding a new home in Smallbrook Queensway.

Several ideas have been brought forward for the project and this latest incarnation would see the building transformed into a boutique hotel, containing 130 bedrooms and some ground floor retail and commercial space.

No hotel operator was named in the planning application documents lodged with the council but the project does appear to have some interesting financial backers behind it.

The applicant is called Beneficial House (Birmingham) Regeneration, a company incorporated in 2013 and which lists 95 members on the Government’s Companies House website.

Among those named as members are Manchester City striker Sergio Aguero, Bournemouth goalkeeper Asmir Begovic and five-time Olympic rowing champion Sir Steve Redgrave.

Built between 1959 and 1962, the Beneficial Building was the first pre-cast concrete building in Birmingham but its previous owners fell into administration in 2008. IT would seem developers have been waking up to the potential of building in the Southside area and off Bristol Street.

Having already referenced Barratt Homes’ plans and New Monaco, this project is eyeing a run-down site once occupied by the Kent Street bath houses.

The £100 million scheme would see 400 apartments to rent and a further 100 units to buy built on what is now a pretty ugly and derelict plot.

There will also be a public courtyard, retail space, rooftop garden terrace and private residents’ hub across five principal buildings, with heights ranging from six to 18 storeys.

Camborne Land Investments announced in March it had bought the site and then lodged its plans with the council towards the end of the year.

The project is Camborne’s first UK residential development.

The site once housed Kent Street Baths which opened in 1852 as the first public swimming facility and wash house provided by the Birmingham Baths Committee.

In 1930, the older structures were demolished to make way a new building containing swimming pools and Turkish and Russian baths but these closed and became derelict before being demolished.