Brindleyplace, Birmingham: Creating an Inner City Mixed-use Development in Times of Recession

Abstract

This article tells the story of Brindleyplace, a pioneering mixed-use development in Birmingham, UK. It describes how the development was delivered according to a masterplan and pioneering ‘partnering arrangements whereby contractors were involved with architects in designing the buildings. The scheme created new commercial squares, brought activity to historic canalsides, and included the first private housing development of any significance in inner city Birmingham since the Second World War. However, it could have been very different. The City Council assembled the site, set out a vision, and selected a consortium of developers. During a recession, a new and more flexible masterplan was developed. When the site went into receivership, the Council was able to enforce clauses in the development agreement with the result that the receiver sold it to a new developer, Argent, for a fraction of the price paid four years previously. Argent subsequently constructed individual buildings as and when the market allowed. What happened therefore illustrates the role of external events, in this case, the property crash of 1989, in the development process, as well as the contribution that can be made by a robust yet flexible vision and a masterplan emphasizing quality of design. It shows how property development is not necessarily a linear process and that public sector land owners can sometimes achieve positive outcomes by taking advantage of opportunities opened up by financial distress.

Notes

1. The study does not make explicit use of the theories of urban regeneration in most current use today (see Davies & Imbroscio, 2009). Pluralist theories, such as urban regimes, theories of network governance, or new institutionalist approach to studies of partnerships would have added little to what is presented here. The most relevant theoretical model is contingency theory, which provided a structure for studies of local authorities at a time of reorganization, when it was apparent that without consideration of local circumstances, histories, or the personalities of chief executive officers or political leaders, it was often not possible to understand why one local authority differed from another (Greenwood et al., 1974, 1975). Readers may wish to compare this study with a study of Attwood Green, an innovative housing regeneration project in central Birmingham, which endeavours to draw a consensus between a variety of theories of urban governance (Jones & Evans, 2006).

2. The City Council had its eye on land in this vicinity before the First World War! (Haywood, 1918).

3. The Secretary of State had the power, under S.112 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971, to create a Comprehensive Development Area under where the council would have the power to acquire the land by compulsory purchase. This would ‘secure the treatment as a whole, by development, redevelopment or improvement, or partly by one and partly by another method, of the land or of any area in which the land is situated’. This was one of the last uses of this legislation, which was repealed shortly afterwards.

4. This legislation did not require the council to have detailed land use proposals for the site, as later legislation required, nor to produce an environmental assessment. The documentation focussed on the convention centre, outlined in a feasibility study in 1983, and did not even mention the possibility of an indoor arena.

5. The adjacent St. Peters conservation area was de-designated so that canalside houses and the Chapel of the Messiah, built over the Birmingham canal, could be demolished (Bartlam, 1996). The owners of a listed factory building in Cambridge Street successfully appealed against demolition. This factory was subsequently refurbished and extended by the Institute of Electrical Engineers as Austin Court, a successful conference centre in its own right. This and the other landowner objections delayed the Compulsory Purchase Order from 1984 to 1986. Another listed building, the Christian Science church on Broad Street, was excluded because its owners, the brewing company Bass, agreed to bring it into use as a bar or night club.

6. Other money came from the Sports Council, the European Regional Development Fund, and commercial borrowing, backed by a Council guarantee. Because there was no capital receipt, the City Council was not obliged to withhold any part of it for paying off debts.

7. Two of the leading Birmingham-based architectural partnerships, Glen Howells Associates and Associated Architects, designed two of the final buildings.

8. Traditional building practice in the UK involves an architect who works with a client to design a building, a quantity surveyor who works out the ‘‘quantities’’ of different kinds of work and materials needed to build it, and a contractor who tenders on the basis of those quantities. The contractor does not expect to talk to the architect unless it wins the contract. By contrast, in a partnered contract, architect, engineer, contractor, and quantity surveyor are identified at the start of the process, and work together to achieve the design and minimize costs, being paid on the basis of ‘‘open-book’’ contracts that set out the work actually undertaken. This approach was advocated and legitimated in the 1998 Egan Report and is now widespread in the UK, in both the public and private sectors. It removes large areas of risk from the contractors, and incentivizes them to find means of cutting costs through changes in the design, while removing perverse incentives to make large profits from variations in contracts and from second-guessing the quantities of materials in a schedule of rates prepared in advance of contract by a quantity surveyor.

9. Argent have maintained close working relationships with several of these architectural and design practices, who are playing key roles in their current flagship development at Kings Cross.

10. In subsequent buildings, Argent only signed leases after buildings were constructed as agreed.

11. The original intention was to copy the shape of the tail fin of a whale, which could have been spectacular.

12. At the time of writing, the City Council is developing the Energy Centre as a Combined Heat and Power scheme to supply a large area nearby, including council buildings and the new library. Argent meanwhile has made Combined Heat and Power a major feature of its development at Kings Cross in London.

13. This building, designed by the Birmingham-based architects Glen Howell Associates replaced a Hotel and Catering Training Academy behind the Novotel.

14. The Kings Cross development in London, on a site four times the size, has the benefit of London property values. Argent is the developer and many of the individuals who played key roles in Brindleyplace are involved.

15. These features all contain elements of uncertainty, in that they could not easily have been predicted in advance, and illustrate contingency theory that hypothesizes that there will be specific features and individuals, and reactions to unforeseen events, which make one development different from another.