Cllr O'Boyle visits the Coventry Evening Telegraph Hotel. - Video and audio transcripts

Cllr O’Boyle: “Hello, I’m just here at the Coventry Telegraph Hotel. I’m here with Brian Harrabin who is a director of Complex Development Projects who’ve actually built this hotel. Brian tell me, what about this hotel? What have we got here?”

Brian Harrabin: “Well I think we’ve got something really unique for Coventry Cllr O’Boyle. It’s really going to be an exciting place. A real mix with a great mix of social interaction but obviously the 88 bedrooms, boutique bedrooms. A lot of them all very different. A lot of them a lot larger than the average size bedroom and we’ve tried to keep a lot of the original feel of the sixties architecture and worked really hard on doing that.”

Cllr O’Boyle: “And it’s real quality. You’ve really emphasising the quality of this sort of hotel in Coventry.”

BH: “Oh, I think so because I think it’s something that we’d identified that Coventry lacked and obviously ahead of the City of Culture next year and then obvs the Commonwealth Games the following year. It’s a really great opportunity to help showcase Coventry and all the great talent and ability that Coventry has and just get people thinking and helping to sort of feed into that news stream that Coventry is a great place to be.”

 Cllr O’Boyle: “Fantastic, absolutely brilliant. Now look, the other thing is we’re right here in what used to be the old reception and what have we got behind us? Some of the old fixtures and fittings of the actual Coventry Evening Telegraph building. In this particular part, how much of the original fixtures and fittings would you say are still in situ as part of the overall build Brian?”

BH “Well we’ve worked really hard in retaining a lot of that because it is iconic of the type of architecture and the quality of the feel with the inlayed mahogany. See the black ebony strips going round the top and the engraved marble which is obviously all original. So all of this for those who remember coming in to place their adverts all those years ago if you are as old as me, then you’ll see that a lot of this is all original and it’s been repurposed to make the centrepiece behind me, the centre bar area and then walking round behind sort of off in the distance you can even see an old workspace that has been repurposed.”

Cllr O’Boyle: “Brilliant and right behind me, or right behind out photographer, of course you’ve got Corporation Street. A fantastic location, this will be open very soon in time for City of Culture. We’re in the bar area now and that’ll be an opportunity for us to start enjoying Coventry as it is, once we get through this Covid period. So, great opportunity for us to see the work that is going on today. Hopefully you can get your bookings in as soon as they are available for room hire.”