PARADISE FOR DEVELOPERS?

12-02-2008

As English Heritage ponders whether Birmingham Central Library should be listed, campaigner Alan Clawley wonders why property developers seem reluctant to plunge in with exciting plans for Paradise Circus if the building is knocked down. Do the money men know something the Council doesn't?

Are the people of Birmingham, and most of the councillors who represent us, being taken for a ride by property developers who have an eye on redeveloping Paradise Circus?

While the City is spending several million pounds of Council tax-payers money clearing the way for a developer to redevelop it for profit, the one developer in the frame – Gary Taylor of Argent, who created Brindley Place - doesn’t seem willing to spend a penny of his own money to show us what he plans to build there.

So whilst the Council has been bending over backwards by agreeing to demolish its 35-year-old Central Library, recently voted second most popular in the UK, and preparing to spend £193 million that it hasn’t got on a new REP-Library on a skimpy site in Centenary Square, we are no wiser about what all this effort will achieve for Paradise Circus.

How can City Councillors, never mind ordinary citizens, judge whether it is all going to be worth the hassle and expense involved? In the six years that the Council has been talking about redeveloping Paradise Circus there has been no whisper of a planning application, no artists impressions, no computer-generated perspectives, and no walk through videos of the sort we are bound to be bombarded with over the coming months when the Council wants to tell us about its new library.

Why should this be so? Why do we only know of one developer who is interested in redeveloping Paradise Circus? Was there no competition? Does he feel there is no need to explain his plans to the public? Is the property market too volatile at the moment?

Is he waiting to see whether the new library scheme will fail like the two previous ones? It’s a serious cause for concern when the City Council leadership shows more confidence in the future than an experienced and canny property developer is willing to show.

It’s true that some councillors are waking up to the danger and asking their leaders serious questions. But they have been too easily distracted by the funding problems of the new library project and taken their eyes off what will happen to Paradise Circus.

Friends of the Central Library challenge the Council’s claim that redevelopment of Paradise Circus is not possible without the demolition of the Central Library - whether it is listed or not. Just look at:

• Brindleyplace, which was redeveloped around the Victorian Oozells Street School, now the Ikon Gallery
• the Rotunda, which has just been refurbished amidst surrounding redevelopment, and
• the Town Hall which is back in business after a long period of neglect

There is no good reason why the Library - also after a long period of neglect - and any other useful buildings, like the Adrian Boult Hall, cannot get the same treatment.

Any developer should be required by the Council to show that they have seriously considered the option of retaining all the useful buildings on a site. On the other hand the City Council should not be allowed to waste our money by knocking those good buildings down just to rebuild them a few yards away even if they claim that money is no object - a strange claim when they are selling off their assets to make ends meet.

Scrutiny must now apply the value-for-money test not just to the new library in isolation but to the whole Paradise Circus venture, and the case for retaining and refurbishing the best existing buildings within any redevelopment, and then compare the two.

We do not believe this is beyond the powers of either a developer or the Council and that it must be done if the people of Birmingham are to feel confident that their money is being spent wisely.