Heritage & Listed Buildings

North East Lincolnshire Council & Historic England

Background

AspinallVerdi conducted an Options Appraisal and Viability Assessment to determine the Optimum Viable Use (OVU) for No.5, No .7 & No.9 Eleanor Street, Grimsby. Two of the buildings on site, No.7 (Former Education Department Offices) and No.9 (Former Art College), are Grade II listed and the site sits within Holme Hill Conservation area.

AspinallVerdi were the lead contractors with conservation architects, heritage experts and engineers/quantity surveyors in the team.
During the period of the commission the building was subject to a catastrophic fire.

Approach and Methodology

We undertook the following tasks:

• Site visit.
• Baseline review of heritage assessments; property market; heritage policies.
• Long-list options workshop including establishing the assessment criteria.
• Detailed designs, heritage assessment and cost plans for the 3 shortlisted options.
• Conservation deficit cashflow appraisals of the 3 shortlisted options.
• Funding assessment to identify potential funding sources to increase the viability and enable delivery of the shortlisted options.
• Scoring of the shortlisted options in terms of financial viability, funding, heritage, and delivery risks.

Outcome

We considered options with the potential to deliver a long-term sustainable use of the site/buildings, the ability to sustain its own use/works and which posed “least harm” to the assets. The shortlisted options included: Market sale residential; Intermediate / supported living affordable housing; or community uses.

The challenge is whether there is a mix of uses that could be accommodated across the 3 buildings. Also, whether there was a project sponsor willing to take on the funding business cases and delivery.

Download PDF