The boss of a Midland’s design agency has been left with an unusual dilemma — where to park his new office. Neil Morten, head of Rugeley-based GMP Design, bought a condemned Boeing 737 jet to create an innovative new office for his growing business. Now he’s searching south Staffordshire for a prominent site to house the stripped-out airliner.
The Lichfield firm — which specialises in pub, club and leisure interior design — plans to use the aircraft as an office and studio during the day, transforming it to a showpiece bar and private hire venue at weekends.
The idea of using a plane as his company’s base came to Morten while he was working with an international consortium to create a restaurant and bar near Thurrock, Essex, inside a converted Boeing 747 jumbo jet.
“We were chatting and showing clients around the jumbo jets in an aeroplane graveyard and thought, ‘we should be doing this’.
“The deal for the 737 is done and all we need now is a prominent site on which to put it. As long as we can lease the land we can park it up and it should be quite simple.”
Before being transported the jet has to be stripped bare and the fuselage and the two wings cut into three sections.
“Our young designers at GMP are creating wonderful leisure venues around the world, many of which are household names,” added Morten.
“All this wonderful work is being done from our headquarters in Rugeley, but we want to expand that into truly inspirational offices and studios … and if we hadn’t bought it the plane would otherwise have gone for scrap.
“We are also talking to various sponsors about the scheme,” added Morten, “and because it will be such a high-profile project we have had numerous enquiries asking whether we will accept logos for the outside.”
The businessman launched GMP 22 years ago. Since then it has expanded to employ 12 staff — although its new Boeing offices would allow it to hire up to 35 — and has worked for the likes of Disney, The Ministry of Sound, Lumina and the University of Birmingham. GMP is currently working on the £2m scheme to restore Cleethorpes Pier.
