Insider Media Limited

Birmingham City Council has told the government where its high speed rail terminus must go so that it can proceed with regenerating Eastside.

The area on the edge of Birmingham city centre is one of those to be prioritised in the updated Big City Plan, which was launched on Wednesday. The 20-year plan includes proposals to create an additional 1.5 million sq m of business space in the city centre, expanding the city core by 25 per cent and growing the city’s economy by £2.1bn a year.

On the Eastside part of that plan, Birmingham City Council’s director of regeneration Waheed Nazir told Insider: “What we are doing is saying to the government that this is where we want the station. It’s about taking leadership rather than be led otherwise you would have uncertainty in the marketplace.”

A piece of land close to the Curzon Street railway terminus has been set aside for the project.

“The announcement of High Speed 2 is fantastic but it has brought real challenges,” Nazir said. “We’ve commissioned [Birmingham-based architect] Glenn Howells to bring a detailed masterplan for Eastside.

“It’s about confirming what we can deliver. We will continue with the multi-story acre park and the park will go ahead. There are also some offices that can be delivered now and which are not affected by the line.”

Nazir said there are also plans to create a station square and a boulevard. “We don’t want thousands of people arriving at the station and going straight into the city centre. We want some of those people going back into Eastside,” he said.

It is planned to re-use the currently boarded up Curzon Street station in some way.

One of the biggest challenges High Speed 2 has posed for the Eastside plans is to find a new site for Birmingham City University. Its planned development site is no longer available because of the rail plans.

It seems most likely that it will utilise the land set aside for the heavily publicised vertical theme park (VTP) owned by regional development agency Advantage West Midlands. Talks are ongoing. Although the VTP idea was launched with a fanfare, the theme park developer VTP Global has failed to come up with a financial plan that convinced AWM of the scheme’s viability.