New from Old – Creating office space for BSD in Highcross
Smallman & Son has just completed work on an office refurbishment project for Building Services Design (BSD) at 62 Highcross Street, Leicester, also home to the Cosy Club restaurant and bar.
Refurbishment projects have been a part of Highcross Street’s history since Roman times. The High Cross built in 1577 was a circular structure with eight pillars and a pointed roof, a market shelter at the site of mediaeval Leicester’s Wednesday and Friday markets in Highcross Street.
And since the 1800’s this town centre building at Number 62 has housed makers of all sorts of clothing and footwear, from boots and shoes to hats, clothes and hosiery.
In what was latterly a knitwear factory, Cosy Club opened in 2014 occupying ground floor and basement. The transformation then from faded factory to welcoming eatery kept the original industrial feel of the building with its high ceilings, original stone walls and wood floors and tall windows bringing in plenty of natural light.
This recent, five week Smallman & Son project for BSD has also attracted a lot of interest from the business community, taking an old second floor building shell and fitting it out completely to create a brand new BSD office space.
The floor was very uneven so one of our first priorities was boarding out the entire area. A new board room and server room were then formed in timber studwork and a large glazed screen and glass doors fitted. With the frame in place, new flooring was laid, new sanitary ware fitted, and pipework plumbed in for a new kitchen. At the same time, our joiners created new up-stands for desks to butt up to. Once the floating walls, board room and server room were finished, we plastered and decorated in chalk paint.
The city centre location, tight restrictions for parking and working on the second floor of a building presented some challenges too. Using skips was impossible so waste had to be bagged up and removed which was a rather time consuming! Getting materials inside was not a quick job either so to speed up the process we made sure we had some extra staff on hand on site working to meet the finely-tuned delivery times.
The opening event is on 12 February.
Client website: Bsd.co.uk
