The city's growing serviced apartment sector is set to get another entrant after new plans were lodged to bring a vacant Grade II-listed office building back into use.
Rustic Pine Developments is hoping to turn 7-8 Waterloo Street, in the Colmore Business District, into 32 one- and two-bedroom serviced apartments with a bar or restaurant on the ground floor and basement.
InterContinental Hotels Group first unveiled plans more than two years ago to open a 61-bedroom Hotel Indigo at the site, joining its existing outlet in The Cube, which was to be run by Rustic Pine Developments.
It is understood the hotel group is no longer connected to the redevelopment of 7-8 Waterloo Street but London-based Rustic Pine Developments remains on course to give new purpose to the seven-storey office block.
The building has been unoccupied for more than four years and planning permission was granted in 2010 for the change of use to a hotel but this has since lapsed.
The new venture would neighbour a Premier Inn hotel and benefit from a busy area for existing bars and restaurants as well as planned new openings.
The city's serviced apartment market, also known as apart-hotels, already counts sites at the Rotunda and Arcadian Centre while others are planned by Staycity and Bloc Hotel, both in the Jewellery Quarter, and Court Collaboration in the former HSBC building, in Paradise Street.
The revised application for 7-8 Waterloo Street has been submitted to the city council by Devon-based architecture firm Burke Rickhards which also worked on the original plans to open a new Hotel Indigo.
