Leicester City Centre designated Leicester's new cultural quarter, and is already the site of the Leicester Creative Business Depot(built on the old Leicester City Bus depot and keeping the initials) and the Athena. The LCB Depot opened in July 2004, and by the time of its first birthday had let 37 of 55 units, with talk starting of finding an additional site. Opposite the Athena, a new flagship £60 million Curve Theatre, Leicester, designed by Rafael Vinoly Architects, started construction in 2005, on a site that has been long-disused. It is planned to be ready for handover 2007 to the Haymarket company, who
Alliance & Leicester Alliance & Leicester Alliance & Leicester plc was a British bank and former building society, formed by the merger in 1985 of the Alliance Building Society and the Leicester Building Society. The business demutualised in 1997, when it was floated on the London Stock Exchange. It was listed in the FTSE 250 Index, and had been listed in the FTSE 100 Index from April 1997 until June 2008. After running into difficulty during the financial crisis, the bank was acquired by the Santander Group in October 2008, and transferred its business into Santander UK plc in May 2010. It was