£150 million 'whirlpool' hotel in City gets the go-ahead

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American billionaire entrepreneur Stan Thomas has won permission to transform Trinity Square near Tower Bridge by constructing a huge glass atrium around a central courtyard.

The spectacular design, which echoes the Great Court at the Royal Museum, resembles a whirlpool from above and is set to be completed by 2012.

A glass canopy will cover a huge ballroom at the new hotel while the central well of the rotunda will be used as a landscaped garden.

Guests will drive into two "pavilions" in the grounds of the hotel and car lifts will lower them into an underground car park.

The Grade II* listed building, which has been vacant for years, will be restored and its grand rooms incorporated into the 121-room hotel. There will also be 30 private apartments on site.

Peter Rees, the Corporation of London's planning chief, claimed the hotel will be one of the smartest in the capital and is aimed at London's wealthiest visitors, with suites to accommodate guests' personal staff.

"It will be really top end," he said. "We asked why the suites were so large and they told us that the pilot and the chauffeur had to sleep somewhere.

"Overall this is an absolutely splendid project."

Mr Thomas, a committed Christian who made his fortune with a string of projects across the US, will develop the scheme with his company Thomas Enterprises.

Rob Steul, principal at Woods Bagot and designer of the scheme, said: "Trinity Square is a unique site in the Square Mile and overlooking a World Heritage site at the Tower of London. The hotel will be the only one of its kind serving the City and Canary Wharf.

"Thomas Enterprises and Woods Bagot have been working with English Heritage and the City of London to develop a design which removes unsympathetic Sixties extensions and restores the central rotunda space to the building, which was lost during the Blitz.

"This generous central space will become the new heart of the building, and rival the scale of the Reading Room in the Great Court of the British Museum."