Exciting new plans for Palmer Lane - Video and audio transcripts

Cllr O’Boyle: Well hello. I’m here today in a very interesting place. It’s Palmer Lane, a hidden part of Coventry. Only the people in the know really know about this particular part of the city. I’m here with Carol Pyrah who is the Executive Director of Historic Coventry Trust. Our partners as part of a number of schemes across the city and this is a really exciting one and interesting one for me personally because of the river. Carol do you want to tell us a bit about what is going to take place here.

Carol Pyrah: Yeah absolutely. As you say this is a bit of the river. It’s one of the rare bits of the river that is un-culverted in the city centre and the idea is that we create a new public space down here. De-culverting the river, regenerating, repairing the funny shaped building behind us and have a new destination for people in the city and this is all part of that bigger regeneration of the Burges and Hale street that we’ve been doing as part of the national demonstrator project for High Street Heritage Action Zones.

Cllr O’Boyle: Lovely. Well look, thank you Carol for that. That is really interesting. People often talk about the River Sherbourne but so much of it is hidden beneath the streets of Coventry. We’re going to open a little bit of it up for the public to see. But here’s the important point as well. If I just ask the cameraman just to scroll round a bit here. Carol mentioned about this funny looking building behind us called the Illingworth building and there’s plans for that as well. To make this street a bit more inviting and interesting for people to come. So, if we come back again to Carol. Just to say, Carol is, as I say, Executive Director of Historic Coventry Trust. They’re doing a fantastic job with Draper’s Hall, with Hale Street, with the Burges, with so many other schemes that we’ve got going on in Coventry. Really good times here.