Birmingham must get streetwise in search for new shoppers

Sep 29 2009 by Alun Thorne, Birmingham Post

Head of Business Alun Thorne speaks to a leading city developer and an architect about their vision to transform Birmingham’s city centre experience

Walking around Birmingham city centre can be a pretty unedifying experience. Not so long ago it could be terrifying, but now it is merely unedifying.

Back in the days of IRA bombs and concrete collars, nobody in their right mind would put Birmingham at the top of their shopping destinations – it would have been lucky to have reached the bottom.

But those days are long gone. First it was the new Bullring, then came the Mailbox and for the last few years Birmingham has been vying hard with Glasgow and Manchester for the title of best venue for shopaholics outside of London.

But what it now boasts in shops, it lacks in inspiration – in short, the individual elements of the city are far stronger than the sum of its parts.

It is almost a decade now since Birmingham took a monumental leap in shaking off its grey image with the Selfridges building and developments like The Mailbox, but since then the city has remained steadfast in its lack of vision.

But there is now a very real possibility that the city could be in line for a potentially jaw-dropping makeover after Retail Birmingham – the Business Improvement District for the city centre’s retail sector – decided to take up the challenge.

Chaired by Birmingham Development Company founder Alan Chatham, Retail Birmingham has embarked on a project which he hopes will pull together all that is good in Birmingham to create a “spectacular shopping experience”.

Mr Chatham, whose company is behind The Mailbox, said: “One of the original drives of the BID was to make the city’s retail area cleaner and safer and we are working very hard towards this at the halfway point of the five-year BID.

“Now we are looking to take the city’s retail offer to a new level. We are looking at what it is that differentiates a city from another, what looks nice, what feels nice, ultimately what is going to make people pick Birmingham as a shopping destination over somewhere else.

“There are some great elements to the centre of Birmingham but they don’t always link together.

“What we are looking to do is bring together the different areas of the city centre and create a spectacular shopping experience.”

Retail Birmingham has signed up Ken Shuttleworth’s Make architects for the project which has just undertaken an exhaustive consultation with various stakeholders in the city and it is now on the verge of the serious design work which will look at what specific improvements can be made to improve the street scene.

“We are absolutely serious about this plan and that is why we have bought in a heavy hitter like Ken Shuttleworth and his team at Make,” said Mr Chatham.

“At the moment we are talking about the course grain of the scheme but they will soon be getting down to the real detail.