Official Birmingham Development Thread 38!

[smysticed]

Originally Posted by feltip

Greater Birmingham in the greater sense. There is a wider geography for locations generally when it comes to tourist descriptions and zones.

Maybe, but surely most people on a city break aren't going to hire a car, so these places are simply out of reach for them.

[woodhousen]

GE Capital signs biggest Brum deal

By Lisa Pilkington | Office | 24-07-2012 | 12:28 | Print
GE Capital Real Estate has secured Birmingham's biggest city centre office letting of 2012.

Westinghouse Rail Systems, part of the Invensys Group, has taken 15,150 sq ft at Maple House at 150 Corporation Street. A five-year lease has been agreed at a rent of £13.50 per sq ft.

GE Capital has spent £1.5m refurbishing the 58,315 sq ft building. Existing tenants include Etc Venues and Tesco Express on the ground floor. The remaining 6,500 sq ft of office space is being marketed by joint agents Colliers International and GBR Phoenix Beard.

Birmingham's office market is performing very poorly with only two deals of more than 10,000 sq ft completing in Q2 this year - Monarch Recruitment took 10,500 sq ft at Temple Point on Temple Row and Binding Site took an extra 14,628 sq ft at Calthorpe House in Edgbaston.

Alex Tross, associate director in the office agency team at Colliers, explained: "Take-up during 2012 has been slow and competition to secure tenants is intense, particularly in the secondhand market where there are more options than for grade A new-builds."

According to the Birmingham Office Market Forum's latest figures, office take-up in central Birmingham in the first half of 2012 totalled 147,654 sq ft from 63 deals, of which, 93,081 sq ft was taken across 35 deals in Q2.

DTZ advised Westinghouse Rail Systems.

[sefton66]

Rather than bump the thread...

Anyone else get a feeling the rumour of Premier Inn deal for Regal may have been wrong?

I'd have expected to have seen some revised plans by now?

[woodhousen]

thats the joys of the media and rumours.... some turn out to be accurate, some not....

[mikey23]

2012/04054/PA

The Brandour Works 400 New John Street West Birmingham B19 3PE

http://eplanning.birmingham.gov.uk/N...DAURI=PLANNING

Change of use, refurbishment and partial demolition of Brandour Works to form new business space (B1), conversion and extension of boiler house to form micro brewery (B1), restaurant (A3), public house (A4), erection of 5 storey hotel (C1), associated basement and surface parking

[Spread]

Excellent news, I always look at that building and hope that it could be put to a new use

[Nacho]

Great news , I thought this building would go the same way as the building in Walsall last night.

[Typhoon2000]

Originally Posted by woodhousen

GE Capital signs biggest Brum deal

By Lisa Pilkington | Office | 24-07-2012 | 12:28 | Print
GE Capital Real Estate has secured Birmingham's biggest city centre office letting of 2012.

Westinghouse Rail Systems, part of the Invensys Group, has taken 15,150 sq ft at Maple House at 150 Corporation Street. A five-year lease has been agreed at a rent of £13.50 per sq ft.

GE Capital has spent £1.5m refurbishing the 58,315 sq ft building. Existing tenants include Etc Venues and Tesco Express on the ground floor. The remaining 6,500 sq ft of office space is being marketed by joint agents Colliers International and GBR Phoenix Beard.

Birmingham's office market is performing very poorly with only two deals of more than 10,000 sq ft completing in Q2 this year - Monarch Recruitment took 10,500 sq ft at Temple Point on Temple Row and Binding Site took an extra 14,628 sq ft at Calthorpe House in Edgbaston.

Alex Tross, associate director in the office agency team at Colliers, explained: "Take-up during 2012 has been slow and competition to secure tenants is intense, particularly in the secondhand market where there are more options than for grade A new-builds."

According to the Birmingham Office Market Forum's latest figures, office take-up in central Birmingham in the first half of 2012 totalled 147,654 sq ft from 63 deals, of which, 93,081 sq ft was taken across 35 deals in Q2.

DTZ advised Westinghouse Rail Systems.

Hmm, Westinghouse... that's interesting...

[markmcd1976]

Moving in ready for HS2??

[Nacho]

I really think we missed a trick not securing and promoting a tranport museum ; they always seem so popular .Coventry's transport museum is a great place and is really worth a visit .

http://www.birminghampost.net/news/n...name_page.html

[woodhousen]

i didnt even realise we had a transport museum...

[U475 Foxtrot]

Originally Posted by Nacho

I really think we missed a trick not securing and promoting a tranport museum ; they always seem so popular .Coventry's transport museum is a great place and is really worth a visit .

http://www.birminghampost.net/news/n...name_page.html

They're got a brilliant cycling exhibition on there at the moment.

In other car museum news the jaguar heritage museum closes on the 24th August. It's not open on Saturdays and the last Sunday is this weekend. http://www.jaguarheritage.org/Museum.aspx

[sefton66]

Originally Posted by woodhousen

i didnt even realise we had a transport museum...

Wasn't it at duddeston somewhere before the council upped the rent? I think they moved to Aldridge?

[markmcd1976]

We used to have the Patrick Collection in Kings Norton, which had a collection of all sorts of weird and wonderful cars.

[Nacho]

Originally Posted by sefton66

Wasn't it at duddeston somewhere before the council upped the rent? I think they moved to Aldridge?

It was in Aston , just around the corner from Witton station .I went to visit it a couple of years ago but it was closed that day unfortunately . I also went to see the train museum in Tyseley; that was closed too .Here is the link for Tyseley : http://www.tyseleylocoworks.co.uk/tlw/

The two times I went to the Coventry the group of Spanish tourists I went with couldn't believe what they had on offer .Once again a great place to visit.

[Victorian]

Originally Posted by blahblahv2

Anyone spot the population inaccuracies?

Manchester is referred to as

cosmopolitan city of well over two million

Brum referred to as

this city of over a million

Good that Brum is on there, but they could have got these simple facts correct.

Manchester always markets itself as having the population of 'Greater Manchester', whether it be for tourists as here for Trip Advisor, or for their Olympic Games bid, or for the Commonwealth Games, or for FIFA in connection with the World Cup bid (see post #291 on http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showth...840316&page=15).

Birmingham limits its population to the city proper because the wider conurbation is stuck with the name 'West Midlands' which is meaningless to the wider international community.

[Qoasis777]

Who cares.

It's tripadvisor not Encyclopedia Britannica.

Let people be dissappointed when they get there and find a small town in Stockport.

[Spread]

More from EGI:

Brum approves £128m LEP plan

Major projects in Birmingham, including Paradise Circus and Arena Central, will see development kick-started following the approval of an £128m investment plan for the city centre's enterprise zone.

The plan, approved by the board of the Greater Birmingham & Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership, will unlock development in the Westside area of the city, helping schemes such as the 1.8m sq ft Paradise Circus and 2.3m sq ft Arena Central to move forward.

Some £61.3m has been earmarked for the Paradise Circus mixed-use development, plus £25m for the extension of the Metro tram line from New Street to Centenary Square and £40m to support site development and business growth activity.

Around £15m of direct investment will go to cover the 25 other city centre EZ sites, which are spread across the city.

To help the delivery of key sites within the EZ, £76.3m will be invested on site access and development - the focus for this investment will be Paradise Circus. A further EZ investment of £22m is envisaged in 2018/19-2021/22 to complete the scheme.

Match funding will be sought from both public and private sectors.

Andy Street, chairman of the GBSLEP, said: "The enterprise zone provides us with an unrivalled opportunity to drive regeneration.

"The headline figures are impressive and emphasise why it is vital we get this right. Not only will we create a further 40,000 jobs, add £2bn a year to the value of the economy and make available 4.3m sq ft of floorspace over the lifetime of the EZ, but ultimately we will deliver our ambition of becoming a truly world-class city region.

Sir Albert Bore, leader of Birmingham council, added: "The investments will be funded through the uplift in business rates generated by the zone and will help deliver 2m sq ft of floorspace [in Birmingham]."

[morestoreysplease]

Originally Posted by Qoasis777

Who cares.

It's tripadvisor not Encyclopedia Britannica.

Let people be dissappointed when they get there and find a small town in Stockport.

Yes but that's not the point and visitors in Manchester also know that's wrong. Birmingham should be matching everything and more that Mcr does in marketing. We should be treating the conurbation or city region as a business - why short change ourselves? From Wolverhampton to Solihull we are the same city which is more continuous than anything in GM. It's stupid to say Brum is a city of 1.1 million when there are 1.4 million more in the same built up area outside the authority. I'll say it again, there are no barbed wired fences or Berlin / West Bank type walls between boroughs!

[loudrocksurfer]

Controversial incinerator plans given the go ahead

CONTROVERSIAL plans to build a £120million waste incinerator plant in a Worcestershire village have been backed by the Government, despite huge opposition from local residents.

The decision by the Department for Communities and Local Government has paved the way for the EnviRecover plant to be built at Hartlebury Trading Estate.

The incinerator, featuring a 75-foot tall stack, will burn 200,000 tonnes of waste each year from Worcestershire and Herefordshire and create enough electricity to power a town the size of Kidderminster.

The county council say the plant, which will be run by Mercia Waste Management, will enable them to divert more waste away from landfill.

But the plans were strongly opposed by WAIL (Worcestershire Residents Against Incineration and Landfill) amid fears over traffic levels and noise and smells generated at the site.

In a 150-page report, Secretary of State Eric Pickles said there was a ‘compelling and urgent need for the facility as proposed and that there was no other suitable alternative site within Herefordshire and Worcestershire’.

Mr Pickles also concluded there were ‘very special circumstances which clearly outweighed the potential harm to the greenbelt’.

But Mid-Worcestershire MP Peter Luff, who has strongly opposed the scheme, said he was disappointed by the decision.

“There are some modest but apparently useful conditions attached to the approval, but fundamentally the community has lost its brave fight,” he said.

“I am glad the community had a proper opportunity to put its case. Some of their agreements obviously carried great weight with the inspector, especially those relating to the greenbelt.

“But at the end of the day there was to be no happy ending to their David and Goliath story.

“I remain convinced there were better ways of dealing with the waste but, sadly, it looks unlikely that we will now be able to pursue them.”

Coun Anthony Blagg, the county council’s Cabinet Member for Environment and Waste Management, insisted the decision was good news for the people of Worcestershire.

“We continue to be as committed as ever to reducing the amount of waste that goes to landfill,” he added.

“Sitting back and doing nothing simply was not an option because of the environmental and financial impact that it would have had in the future.”

John Plant, director of Mercia Waste Management, said the incinerator would generate enough electricity to power 20,000 homes every year.

“It endorses our belief that EnviRecover is an appropriate, robust, and sustainable waste management solution for the local authorities, a solution that brings added benefits through generating renewable energy, and stimulating the local economy.”

http://www.bromsgrovestandard.co.uk/...ead-46229.html