6th October 2003
Leicester Public consulted on Prime Office Core

The Leicester Regeneration Company (LRC) is organising a public exhibition from 6th – 9th October 2003 at select locations in Leicester. The event will enable the LRC to engage with the citizens of Leicester and gain feedback on proposed plans for the city’s new Prime Office Core.

Since May 2003, the LRC has been working with a specialist team of consultants led by Benoy, an internationally recognised architecture and design consultancy appointed to produce an urban design development framework for this project. The LRC and its consultants have been busy translating conceptual ideas in the masterplan for Leicester and have undertaken detailed appraisals of options for the new 50,000sqm Prime Office Core. This has included the overall design of building layout, spaces and the realignment of the ring road. Two principal options for the relocated ring road have now been drawn up and the public’s view is now required before the LRC undertakes detailed work on the delivery plans.

The exhibition will be held at three different locations in Leicester: Leicester Railway Station on Monday 6th and Tuesday 7th October between 8am and 6pm, Leicester Mercury on Wednesday 8th October from 9am until 5pm and the Haymarket Shopping Centre on Thursday 9th October between 9am and 5pm.

The first proposal intends to reroute St George’s Way across the existing station car park to join Station Street, which needs to be widened to accommodate the amount of traffic that currently uses the ring road. The new road alignment will create a large area for the new office development, including land occupied by the current alignment of St George’s Way. The second proposal for St George’s Way would run behind the new IBIS Hotel, roughly along the line of Constitution Hill. This second option would bring together a greater amount of office space in a single area on the city centre side of the ring road, which is connected by a network of attractive streets and spaces.

John Nicholls, Chief Executive at the LRC says:
“LRC is working toward the delivery of this major project, but there is still a long way to go and a detailed plan is the next step. This is a project of fundamental importance to the future of Leicester’s economy: to restructure the whole area around the station to provide a major and high-quality office development, which will create upwards of 3000 new jobs in the city. As well as comments on layout we need peoples’ views on how the widest possible community benefit could flow from this project.”

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