Work is expected to start this year on two multi-million pound office developments in the centre of Birmingham.
The two office blocks — less than half-a-mile apart on either side of the city’s Snowhill railway station — are both expected to be occupied by the summer of 2016.
The biggest project, but only by a single storey, has been unveiled jointly by Sterling Property Ventures and M&G Real Estate and involves the demolition of The Strip, a derelict 1960s two-storey building between the West Midlands Police headquarters at Lloyd House and the Holiday Inn on Snow Hill Queensway.
To be known as Lumina, the block would offer 180,000sq ft of office space with a double-height atrium and ground floor reception. A typical floorplate would be around 11,500sq ft of office space with a central core.
“A lot of people will ask why build a major office now, when there’s an over-supply of grade A space in Birmingham city centre,” said Sterling managing director James Howarth, “but the demand for that space will pick up as the recovery speeds up and if we’re to win more inward investment like Deutsche Bank, which came to the city and expanded rapidly, Birmingham will need that space ready at hand.
“We will be set fair for the recovery, and with the development of Snowhill on one side of the street, this development will really consolidate the development of Snow Hill Queensway into the city’s premier business district,” he added.
Designed by architectural practice Aedas, which has yet to submit a detailed planning application, the Lumina project falls within the city’s enterprise zone and is adjacent to Birmingham Development Company’s redevelopment of the former Post & Mail site.
The city council is already considering plans from the property arm of the Royal Bank of Scotland for a £40m office tower at 2 Cornwall Street in the Colmore Business District of Birmingham.
West Register intends to create 263,150sq ft of office space on the site of a building it took over in April last year when it bought the leasehold from developer Ballymore. West Register is understood to have paid £7m for the vacant office. Ballymore itself paid in excess of £26m for property in 2006.
The new building would be 13 storeys high and include over 6,000sq ft of ground floor retail space. Its development is being handled by commercial management consultants GVA which, unlike Sterling Property, claimed there was a chronic lack of supply of Grade A space within Birmingham city centre.
“We estimate that the current supply of Grade A space is equivalent to approximately three years’ average annual take-up,” said a GVA spokesperson. “With no prospect of there being an increase in supply in the foreseeable future, the city could experience a supply and demand imbalance as soon as 2015.”
Both developers have stated they are ready to start infrastructure and enabling works early this year with the buildings ready for occupation by 2016.
