Former council leader dubs Broad Marsh plans as ‘Neverland’

Jon Collins

The former leader of Nottingham City Council has dubbed recently-revealed plans to transform the Broad Marsh area as “neverland”.

Jon Collins, who now runs his own property consultancy firm, has called the plans, recently revealed by London-based designer Thomas Heatherwick, “putting lipstick on a pig” and has predicted that a vast swathe of the plans won’t ever get off the drawing board.

The £500m vision for the regeneration of the Broad Marsh area – including the former intu shopping centre, now partially demolished – was unveiled earlier this month by the Greater Broad Marsh Advisory Group, with a promise that it will create 6,000 jobs, 400,000 sq ft of commercial and business space and 750 homes.

Heatherwick Studio, led by the highly-acclaimed British designer Thomas Heatherwick, and Stories, the development company, were commissioned to work with the Advisory Group on the creative vision for the city centre site and advise on how Nottingham can deliver the project.

However, Collins says the plans have myriad flaws.

He told TheBusinessDesk.com: “Asking just one London studio to propose a solution for Broad Marsh leaves little choice but to join the crowd enthusing wildly about whatever is proposed or, by offering anything other than fulsome praise, be seen as a cynic.”

There are positives, though, said Collins. “The plans for a great looking new green space in Lister Square go some way towards meeting the hopes of so many expressed in the Big Conversation and the connection through to the new public space already being created on Collin Street is good too,” he said.

“And while the buildings proposed to the west of Lister Gate are conventional, they’re deliverable too, and will improve the area if the council resists selling the sites to the highest bidder for student accommodation.”

However, to the west of Lister Gate there are “challenges”, said Collins.

He added: “First, it’s easy to say ‘we’ll remove the NCP car park to open up the space towards the castle’ but without spending a lot of money it will be tough to persuade NCP to give up their long and profitable lease.

“Second, the artists impressions show a lot of development on the old Castle College site. But that’s been leased to a school, so any redevelopment there and the capital receipt it should generate aren’t likely to appear soon.

“Third, the vision for the area south of Collin Street known as Broadmarsh West won’t happen. Most of the land there is owned by a single developer with their own proposals for much needed offices who see the council’s plans as unviable.”

But it’s the retention of the concrete frame of the existing shopping centre east of Listergate that will see this vision go the way of Heatherwick’s unbuilt Garden Bridge across the Thames, according to Collins.

He said: “In the short-term keeping the frame might save the council money, but solving that problem just creates others.

“Who is going to invest in a thirty-year old steel and concrete structure without prohibitively expensive warranties? And who other than the council will be picking up the public liability costs of all those open structures, unfenced drops, a climbing wall and the trampoline net featured in the visuals.

“What use is going to be made of the frame? Box Park style lightweight structures and shipping containers might work in the short term but when they’re still there beyond the temporary, will that be good enough for Nottingham’s southern gateway?

“And in the longer term, when the real world choice of permanent uses are residential, retail, leisure or office, is there really demand that can’t be better met elsewhere in the city?”

There are practical problems too, said Collins.

He asked who is going to take responsibility for maintaining the hanging vegetation, the vegetable plots, plants and flowers? He points that, good intentions aside, the council has struggled to maintain much more limited planting in Old Market Square.

“And who is going to deal with the rats, another problem in Old Market Square, the pigeons that will quickly make themselves at home on the frame, or the anti-social behaviour its tucked away spaces will hide?” he said.

“And if there’s no one else but the council to pick up the tab, can they really afford it when cutting children’s services, leisure centres, street cleaning and libraries?

“If not, then imagine a vintage concrete and steel frame with little or no vegetation, perching pigeons, poor maintenance and no security on a cold, grey winter evening. Is that what Nottingham needs? Or would a cleared site, a park and a mix of quality housing, office and retail better meet the test of time.”

Collins points out that The Guardian’s architecture critic called the vision for the Broadmarsh “ruin porn, straight out of a post-apocolyptic disaster movie”, and the Nottingham Civic Society dubbed the plans “a backward step” and “a leap into the fantasy world of Neverland”.

“It’s never going to happen land more like,” said Collins.

“How much time and money will the council waste trying to make this vision work before they drop it as unrealistic and because it can’t be funded? And how long before they’re looking for another new vision and the partner they could get now, ready and able to demolish the whole site and start again?”