A sneak peak at new city court plan
Thursday 22nd April 2010, 9:00PM BST.
This image shows what a multi-million-pound glass-fronted court building planned for Wolverhampton could look like.
Housing magistrates and county courts, it is planned for Fold Street car park just off Darlington Street.
Plans for the £36.9million development have gone to Wolverhampton City Council although funding is not yet available.
This image, released by Wolverhampton Development Company, shows the court fronting on to the Chapel Ash roundabout.
The five-storey building would have 15 courtrooms, offices, secure accommodation for magistrates and judges, a staff car park, custody area and waiting rooms.
If plans are backed it will be the second major development earmarked for that area of the city centre within the last couple of months.
The Penn Road island is also set for an overhaul with the landmark Fox Hotel set to be knocked down and replaced by a Hilton in a £15million redevelopment.
Work will start on the nine-storey 130-room hotel next spring after the Fox has been demolished.
Wolverhampton City Council regeneration chief Councillor Paddy Bradley believes the whole area has a lot of regeneration potential.
She added: “It will be an iconic building.”
The current North Street courthouse was created in the 1970s by adapting the former town hall, a listed building dating from 1867. This building houses the city’s magistrates, licensing justices and the coroner’s court.
Plans for the new building have been commissioned by the Ministry of Justice and in total it will cover 100,000 sq ft. It will consist of six civil and nine magistrates’ courtrooms.
A planning application for the new court building was submitted to Wolverhampton City Council in February this year.
A new court is also in the pipeline for West Bromwich, although funding is also not yet available for that either.
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what an utter utter utter waste of money.
only the civic centre can match it.
invest in start up capital for business instead – perhaps – maybe?
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Yet another ‘plan’ that will just be left as that by the City Council. No fudnign is available yet is the key here. This means some architect will get paid for this but nothing will ever happen!
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Another day..another dollop of cash falling from the political trough. As soon as the election’s over it’s back to creating the kind of mess they’re pretending to fix here.
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Wolverhampton Council..be sure to inform the Lonely Planet Guide, of all these ‘iconic’ gestures you keep throwing at us. I’m sure the world will really appreciate a swanky new court right in the middle of a dump..they’ll be coming in their droves just to witness the spender of this, and other delights such as a traffic island. And they say we are uncultured..bah!
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Its nice the amount of nice building planned for wolves is really good for the city, maybe put it on the map for architecture.
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I can see this being built before the Raglan Street site is ever developed!!
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A lovely looking building
Well done Wolverhampton for having such vision to resurrect such a tired area.
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You try to defend Wolverhampton from the Lonely planets comments and this is what they do??? Improvements need to be made to get people into the city..But then again Criminals are people and theres enough of those everywhere these days. Blame labour for it all again!! The Tories are no better it seems.
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Why the secrecy ?
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What’s the matter with the existing court? I thought that catered for everything as well as being in close proximity to the police station.
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Surely the court buildings we already have aren’t that old. Where is the problem with them? Another glass fronted monstrosity won’t improve the overall stigma attached to the city. And another waste of money to boot.
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Are these courts really necessary?
What is wrong with we have already?
Other folks’ money being spent yet again.
What we need is to attract real productive investment; jobs where people actually make things.
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What an ugly unimaginative waste of money.
This site is a prime site and one of the few in Wton capable of a high rise development. The commercial potential of the site is immense while the old bus depot would create a suitable site for a low rise development such as this.
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It’s so easy to spend taxpayer’s money !
How can a new court be justified so soon after building the new combined court in Piper’s Row. Develop/expand this one, by all means, but don’t scrap it!
With trains, buses, Police all close by, it’s not a bad location and certainly better than the Darlington Street propsal.
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