Bromley House: the £35 million sequel

Just over a year ago an unlikely band of rebels brought a big commercial enterprise crashing to the ground.
The ‘rebels’ were the members of Bromley House, the private subscription library that hides away in a genteel quarter of Angel Row
The big commercial enterprise was the hotel which a developer wanted to plonk on the site of the old Odeon cinema between Angel Row and Maid Marian Way.
The hotel’s guests would have had a grandstand view of one of the most attractive aspects of Bromley House, an otherwise secluded garden.
Infact, they would have had a grandstand view of much of the city centre, as the hotel was going to be 18 storeys high.
Those unfamiliar with Bromley House might be tempted to dismiss it as a fusty, almost eccentric relic.
Woe betide anyone who under-estimates its members, who include intelligent and experienced professional people capable of marshalling a well-wrought argument (not least their chairman Victor Semmens, the formidable former chairman of national law firm Eversheds).
Even though the commercial property market was then at its height, they saw off a project which might have assumed it was in for a relatively straightforward journey from drawing board to planning approval.
The story does not end there, though.
The relaxed atmosphere of the Bromley House reading rooms is being disturbed again, as developers have come back with plans for a £35 million, 10-storey office block.
The conversation I had earlier this week with its Manchester-based architect, Ian Chapman, suggests there has been an earnest attempt to address some of the issues which brought the hotel plan crashing to the ground.
The various elements of the scheme step up from Angel Row to Maid Marian Way to avoid a sudden rise in height; one elevation of the office block leans away from Maid Marian Way to diminish a looming expanse; different colours and surface treatments are used to break up what might otherwise look like a monolith.
Moreover, he says the building has been designed to avoid substantially overlooking the Bromley House garden. Indeed, he argues it will allow more light in than the current Odeon shell
Perhaps. But the conversations I’ve had with Victor Semmens and another custodian of the city’s architectural heritage, Nottingham Civic Society, suggest a view into a secluded garden is not the issue.
Neither protected views nor disguised elevations change the fact that this is another application for a tall building, something Nottingham’s planners have struggled to formulate a coherent policy for.
At 137ft, it would be higher than the tall buildings around it and easily visible from the Old Market Square. In the words of Ken Brand, of the Civic Society, it would stand out like a sore thumb.
While the prospect of another tower block may weigh heavily on a planning committee painfully aware of the 1960s brutalism that dominates Maid Marian Way, there is another issue that will loom large in their minds.
The unspoken word is E.on. Though the developers have refused to confirm it, it is the power company that has been discussing taking all 100,000 sq ft of space in the office block. Its people already work in offices in the city centre and it would like to keep them there.
So, I’m sure, would the members of Bromley House. Perhaps it ought to invite them in to discuss the benefits of membership…