Relief after Nottingham cigarette factory avoids protected status

摘要

Developers were breathing a sigh of relief last month after an application to list Imperial Tobacco's Horizon factory, the last working cigarette manufacturing plant in the UK, was refused by the government. Imperial Tobacco, which makes cigarettes and rolling tobacco at the 900,000 sq ft factory in the south of Nottingham, is scheduled to shut down production next year, and is seeking to sell the 45-acre site through agentsJLL. The development potential of the site was threatened by campaigners' attempts to gain protected status for the monumental five-storey grey concrete building, which was designed by Arup Associates and completed in 1971. Considered by some to be a fine example of brutalist architecture, it is not universally popular locally, and when news of the attempted listing broke in April, the Nottingham Post described it as the city's ugliest building.