Rooms without a view: London's first hotel built in underground car park

A gloomy underground car park in Bloomsbury is to be converted into London’s first subterranean hotel.

Two basement floors of the NCP under Great Russell Street will become £80-a-night “rooms without a view” according to plans seen by the Standard.

The developers of the 175-room hotel say it will provide budget accommodation in the heart of an expensive city.

However, some residents compared the hotel to the use of Tube stations as overnight bunkers during the Blitz.

In a newsletter, the Bloomsbury Association urged residents to lodge objections to the plans with Camden council on grounds ranging from “loss of off-street parking” to “the threat to public health, safety and security”.

Some residents are also concerned about noisy “backpackers” arriving at and leaving the hotel 24 hours a day.

But the developer, property group Criterion Capital, rejects the claims as “rubbish” and says the hotel — called The LDN — will provide stylish accommodation for discerning travellers. A spokesman said: “There are no residents within at least 500 metres.”

If Camden approves the plans the hotel, yards from Tottenham Court Road Tube station, will open in 2014.

Criterion is also planning a much bigger 650-room capsule hotel, also under the LDN brand, in the Trocadero in Shaftesbury Avenue, also opening in 2014.

The NCP site also houses the Central YMCA and the above-ground St Giles Hotel, which will both stay.

Existing car ramps will be converted to accommodate the new hotel’s entrance lobby in Adeline Place.

The rooms, on the fourth and fifth basement floors, will range in size from 11 sq metres to 22 sq metres and include an en-suite lavatory and shower.

It is thought to be the first subterranean hotel in central London although one is planned in a development underneath Hersham golf club in Surrey.

The deepest underground hotel rooms are 155 metres down in a former silver mine in Sweden.