Underground hotel plan at iconic shopping centre
Major works planned for the Brunswick Centre
Friday, 14th April 2023 — By Frankie Lister-Fell
The Brunswick Centre
A SUBTERRANEAN hotel could be built in a disused car park underneath the Brunswick Centre, it was announced last week.
The freeholder of the Grade II-listed building consisting of 408 flats on top of the shopping centre in Bloomsbury will submit a planning application this summer to turn an under-used car park into a hotel.
At an exhibition for residents, developers Lazari said the hotel, which will become a Premier Inn Hub, will have 210 rooms and cost per night will be “in line” with charges at other Hubs in the area. The space will be lit by “circadian lighting” from Finland that mimics natural daylight.
Senior asset manager at Lazari, David Smith, told the New Journal: “We’ve looked at the car park and from surveys of people in the centre, only 2 per cent of customers come to the Brunswick by car. It just felt like something that should be better utilised. The hotel use seemed to fit quite comfortably with the existing retail and restaurants. This isn’t the final version. There might be things that come out of the consultation as well which mean we might change things or add things.”
Jack Bond, who lives in the flats above the Brunswick Centre, said: “We’d rather have no construction at all because the place is noisy as it is. We live right by the Curzon. There’s that huge outdoor eating place, people get drunk and make noise. They’re allowed to sit outside until 10.30pm but then they hang around afterwards.
“The building has a V shape, it’s like an amphitheatre. The sound carries. When we first came here the building excited me. I thought this is the work of a genius – until you live in it.”
Another resident, Guilland Sutherland, said: “I love living here. I think it’s a great idea because the car park was looking terribly sad. No one used it and that’s a good thing.
But it will be very noisy.” The project managers of the development said they will be “doing a lot to mitigate noise” including noise monitoring equipment, dampening blankets and doing noisy work such as drilling two hours on and two hours off.