Heritage and history of former Express & Star building to be honoured as multi-million-pound redevelopment approved

Staff and operations were moved the short distance to Mander House at the end of 2023, leaving the Queen Street building's editorial areas vacant.

Now the 82,000 sq ft site is to undergo an extensive, multi-million pound renovation to create ‘the Newspaper Building’, with apartments, a gym and retail opportunities set to be built.

The work on the building has already started with the opening of Space, a café and bar in the former Express & Star canteen, and the development of a health and wellbeing centre, and now the full development has been given planning approval. It has been developed by Ben Anslow, Adib Zaki, Lee Mitchell and Anil Kataria.

The full development of the building is set to cost around £2 million and Ben Anslow, who is the managing director of BAX Construction, the company working to redevelop the building, spoke about some of the plans for the building and the process to get to that stage.

He said: “We have complete ownership of the building and we have a big retail opportunity on the front of Queen Street, opposite Nando's, so we’re looking to let that out.

“On the back in the old press hall near Castle Street, that’s going to be let out to a leisure company, although I can’t say too much about that at the moment, apart from it’s in progress and the deal’s nearly done.

“We’re working really closely with the local authority, with Wolverhampton Council, as they’ve come and visited the property and had a good walk around with us.

“They’re really excited about the regeneration of this building and we’re going to be trying to give back to Wolverhampton and create an ecosystem around here.”

Mr Anslow said the idea was also to keep the heritage of the building, with the management level on the first floor set to remain intact as his and his partner’s offices, and spoke about the importance of that heritage.

He said; “We’ve kept that heritage within the name, so we’ll be maintaining the Express & Star signs on the front, on the clock and on the bridge as we don’t want to get rid of those.

“I think that’s pivotal to Wolverhampton as it’s been here for 100 years and that’s why we’ve renamed the building the Newspaper Building.”

Mr Anslow also pointed to the fact that the former Express & Star building was like many buildings which were currently empty, but had so much potential, and said it was an opportunity to bring life to the building and the city.

He said: “There are so many buildings that are around the country and, particularly, in Wolverhampton which laid dormant and have so much potential, so as soon as we were given the opportunity to take this over, my business partners and I jumped at the opportunity.

“The city centre living in Wolverhampton isn’t great at the moment and I think the more people living in the centre of Wolverhampton, the better for the city."