Ian Harrabin, chairman of the Historic Coventry trust, is to create a new heritage park in the grounds of the medieval Carthusian monastery on the outskirts of the city centre. He said that the monks’ cells will be restored to create new hotel accommodation and a new events venue will be built in the gardens.

The £14m scheme will also see the River Sherbourne, which runs through the park, taken out of the culvert that it currently contained in and opened up. In the days following the event a Heritage Lottery fund application was submitted for the scheme which Harrabin said would create an attractive location for the city’s fast growing digital business sector.

Ian Harrabin, Managing Director; Complex Development ProjectHe also told the event that the trust was working on the refurbishment and conversion of Coventry’s 19th century Drapers Hall into a classical music conservatoire. The project has have been shortlisted to become one of seven projects with which the Prince of Wales’ Foundation aims to commemorate the heir to the throne’s 70th birthday next year.

Harrabin, who is also managing director of Complex Development Projects, told the event about his own company’s plan to convert the former Coventry Telegraph newspaper office into a hotel. It was announced that the building, which the daily paper has moved out of, would be turned into a boutique 100-bedroom hotel, which will have a 1950s theme to match the building’s era.

It will also house a five-screen arthouse cinema, which will be available for use as a break out conference facility for the Belgrade Theatre. To cross-subsidise the hotel and cinema, Harrabin said that he was planning to demolish a set of neighbouring industrial buildings and build 100 units of student housing on the site.

The refurbishment of the Telegraph building reflected a growing appreciation of Coventry’s post war heritage, Harrabin said: “They recognise that its post war redevelopment is worthy of retention and is becoming the heritage of tomorrow. We are working with Heritage England to look at which buildings should be retained and the future uses we can bring to them. This is about recognising that some of it is pretty good.”

And he said that while the arts and heritage schemes in Coventry had been ‘galvanised’ by its bid to become the UK’s 2021 city of culture. “Even if we don’t win the impact of that has been huge. A huge element of what is planned for city of culture bid will happen anyway.”

James Breckon, director of estates at Warwick University, said that the Russell Group institution’s capital spending had more than doubled from £45m in 2014/15 to £95m in the current financial year.

He said that the capital programme featured a new Sports Hub, which would be double the size of the university’s existing leisure centre, that would be delivered in 2019. Work is also under way on building a new Mathematical Science Building and a new arts and humanities which is being designed by Feilden Clegg Bradly and is due for completion in 2020.

In his presentation, Jaguar Land Rover head of property programmes delivery Colin Harvey said that the car manufacturer’s £200m Gaydon Triangle design and engineering centre is due to open in early 2019.