Emma Clark speaks with Signature Living’s owner Lawrence Kenwright about renovating one of Cardiff’s most iconic buildings: the Coal Exchange.
What sort of things are you doing to preserve the Coal Exchange’s ambience and the history?
The Coal Exchange has all these little heads, artefacts, and dragons all over the place. We’ve taken a picture of every single one of them and we’re putting them in the bathrooms, on the tiles. So when you go to a tile, there’s a QR code, and you scan the QR code and it says “Can you find this artefact in the building?” So when you go round and find it, it gives you a question, you put in the answer, which goes to our website and comes back with if you’re right or wrong. If you’re right, you get a QR code for the bar, so you can go and get a free drink from the bar, so it makes you engage with the building. All we’re doing is making the most of what we’ve been gifted with.
Is everything going to plan?
This is one of 15 sites we’ve got on the go. This is the next one due, and it’s a very quick turnaround, time is money. The longer you take, the more it’s going to cost. There’s a desire among the guys, and today we’re taking all the local guys for a meal tonight. There’s about 60-odd working here. This is the first time they can remember all the docks boys working together. That’s a great thing for us.
You have to understand the building because every building has its own DNA. You have to understand little things like how to get food from A to B without it getting cold. You’re shoehorning a modern standard hotel into an old listed building – if you do something that you shouldn’t do, you could go to jail for it.
How many rooms will there be?
Two hundred and four. If we had knocked down walls, we could’ve done a hell of a lot more. But when I took on the job, I said I don’t want to knock down any walls unnecessarily and I want to keep the original DNA of the building as it was intended, just with a different use, and that’s what we’ve done. If I knock down walls, I’ll go to jail! I wouldn’t have planning permission. All the things that have been said, there’s actually no traction to them.
What’s happening with the spa?
It’ll be like the beautiful spa in Liverpool in 30 James Street, and we’ll create a secret passageway where you need a number to get in. It’s like a secret room, so you’ll be asked a series of questions – you have to get them right and then you’ll be sent the code to get into the passageway, to get into the spa. We’ve also got secret bathrooms as well as normal bathrooms and then we have funky, crazy, mad bathrooms. Again, if you can’t get the questions right you won’t get through.
Are the rooms themed?
All of them! We haven’t got the list of themes yet, a local historian is out doing research on Cardiff’s history. Plus, we’ve got the Butetown History & Arts Centre going downstairs, so that’ll lend itself to be another point of interest in the building. When people come here, I think there’ll be a hard push to get them out. Our aim is still to open five hotels in Cardiff’s historic buildings, and I think I’ve found another building. There’s a building on the end of Bute Street, a beautiful building, but they won’t sell. It’d regenerate the area though.
In truth, this is a great sweet in quite a poor wrapper. The surrounding area isn’t amazing, so we’re trying to get the government and the council to collaborate to put a couple million pounds into the public domain. It’s nothing to do with us – we don’t gain anything at all from it – but when we first came to this building, we were promised that they would do the public domain and as yet, I’m still waiting. Hold on, this is your city! Why’s it down to me as a Scouser?
Exchange Hotel, Cardiff Bay. Opening Fri 28 Apr. Info: www.exchangehotelcardiff.co.uk