Work has started on a £24 million hotel in a key gateway to Birmingham set to benefit from hundreds of millions of pounds of development.

A Hotel La Tour will open in February next year, kicking off a wider City Park Gate development which forms part of plans to regenerate and meet the potential of the city’s Eastside district.

But managing director Jane Schofield admitted there had been no small amount of good fortune involved with securing a hotel in the centre of an area of such vast potential.

The hotel stands to be on the doorstep of the Bullring, the New Street development and, perhaps most importantly, the proposed High Speed Rail station.

The 174-bedroom four-star hotel will also have conference space, a restaurant and bar and a street cafe and will create 100 jobs.

Ms Schofield admitted it had been a leap of faith to choose the site but is confident it was the right choice.

She said: “It is a leap of faith, absolutely. When we first looked at the site none of this was going to be developed but since then everything that is going on in Birmingham has been fantastic for us.

“The weight of numbers we will get on this side of the city will get people talking about us.

“The fact that things are happening around us is a bit of luck rather than anything else.”

The construction project is the first in City Park Gate and one of a select band of privately-funded projects under way.