Martineau Galleries development 2019

[Williamstreeter]

I read in the paper today that what I knew as Martineau Square is to be demolished , the owners seem to think it will be of benefit after serious crime and stabbings of the the last months . This will include new shops office and residence for about 1300 , what does the forum think ?

 

[Astoness]

john is that the square where the oasis shop is

lyn

 

[A Sparks]

Yes, that's Martineau Square

 

[Astoness]

thanks sparks i was not sure...it used to be a nice little shopping area i used oasis a lot and the costamonger pub in my youth...my sister had a sweet stall there for a few years as well...here are the plans for the area

Mall to be demolished in huge city centre transformation plan

Massive plans for new shops, homes and hotel to create 8,000 jobs

www.birminghammail.co.uk

 

[guilbert53]

Around 2009 I started to come up to Birmingham taking photographs of Eastside and one of the areas in the development plan was Martineau Galleries.

Then we had the huge financial crash and it all went on hold. Nothing has happened to the area since.

Then of course HS2 was announced (by PM Gordon Brown) and all of a sudden this Martineau Galleries site is right opposite the front of the HS2 station and is now a prime development site.

Here is a photo I took in 2009 (inside the Millenium Point building) showing the plan for the area. This was pre HS2 of course.

Item number 1 on the map (Curzon Street development) is on the site of the HS2 station so was never built.

Item number 2 (Birmingham City University) was also on the site of HS2 station so was moved to site 11 on the map (where BCU now have a number of buildings). The area they vacated in Perry Barr will be the site of the Commonwealth Games.

Martineau Galleries is shown as number 6 on the map, right at the back of the site plan.

Only some of the things on this plan were built (mainly due to HS2 being announced).



For those unaware of the area in question below is a map I knocked together a few minutes ago.

This area is just North of Moor St station and the BullRing. I have added a small sign showing Moor St station is just off the bottom of the map.

Just above Moor St station (in fact next to it) the huge HS2 station will be built (if it goes ahead!).

The site of Martineau Galleries is shown on the left of the map.

A new tram line will be built in this area (shown as the thick red line). It comes in on the left (from the junction of Corporation St and Bull St where the current trams go down Corporation St). It goes down Bull St, through those buildings - McDonalds etc (which will all be knocked down) and along Albert St. It crosses Moor St Queensway, then turns right UNDER the HS2 station (when built), and then on to Digbeth.

Also shown on the map is a site of a huge development called Exchange Square - hundreds of apartments (for a photo of that see below)


Below, photo of the Exchange Square development.

The horrible brown building on the left of the photo is part of the Martineau development. It can be seen on the "map" above. The office building was emptied in 2009 when the original Martineau Galleries was planned but of course it never went ahead. The offices have been empty ever since. The car park in this building is still being used.

For a time the shop at the base of this building (facing Dale End) was a Toys R Us then more recently an IKEA till that closed.

Sadly the area around Dale End is pretty poor and the sooner this development goes ahead the better. The development of the BullRing and Grand Central (sited above New St station) has "pulled" the shopping focus away from this area and more towards the South and West. Any time I find myself in around Dale End and nearby roads I get rather depressed.

 

[Williamstreeter]

Guilbert53 I notice from your post Macdonalds will be knocked down is that just that branch , or universally hopefully

 

[Andy Foster]

Corporation Square, as it was, was the classiest 1960s development in the city. It was designed by (Sir) Frederick Gibberd, the architect of Liverpool Catholic Cathedral ('Paddy's Wigwam'), and Harlow New Town. Gibberd was trained at the Birmingham School of Architecture but this is his only building in the city. And it had Oasis.

Another one of the few really good 1960s buildings in Birmingham will go. Unless of course... I'm no fan of Boris Johnson, but he's appointed Andrew Gilligan as his transport adviser. Gilligan opposes HS2. So that horrible scheme, which has already cost us the historic Fox and Grapes in Park Street and endangers the Eagle and Tun, may be scrapped. Oh please... and then perhaps the lovely Gibberd buildings will be refurbished and the silly 1990s additions removed, and we'd have a lovely fairly low-rent shopping centre.

 

[guilbert53]

Corporation Square, as it was, was the classiest 1960s development in the city.

Birmingham as a city is at a crossroads.

Currently it has a poor reputation amongst many people in the UK (I help on TripAdvisor forums a lot, and whenever anyone, from UK or abroad - says they want to visit Birmingham the general reply is "what on earth for").

Now the cities image is slowly improving, mainly due to developments over the last 30 years or so - the refurbishment of the canals, the ICC, the Symphony Hall, the NIA (Arena Birmingham), the BullRing, Grand Central (above New St station), the new library and so on.

Birmingham does not have a lot of history, it is a fairly recent city compared to York, Cambridge, Canterbury and so on, so we need other things to bring people to the city. This includes visitors and tourists as well as business people bringing their "head office" here.

Now I *AM* in favour of keeping historic buildings when they add something to the city - The council house, the BMAG, many of the buildings around Colmore Row etc.

However I am NOT in favour of keeping buildings just because they are old and add nothing to the city. For example I was glad when the 70s Madin library complex was knocked down as it added nothing to the city and opened up the route between the city centre and Westside.

For this city to succeed and grow it needs new office buildings. The reason HSBC came to the city was because they could build a new office building. Birmingham is competing against cities all over the world and you only have to look at some of the amazing developments in places like Hong Kong, Malaysia, China etc to realise to compete we have to have new developments.

Now nobody is going to bring their company to Birmingham just because we kept a shopping development from the 1960s. However they MIGHT if there were brand new office in its place, and even better if it is right opposite the HS2 station and less than an hour to London.

Of course HS2 might get cancelled, but then Birmingham remains a not very attractive city 100 miles from London. Its chance to grow and thrive will be lost.

Few photos below of why I think this development should go ahead.

First an aerial view of the total site.



Next a couple of photos of the not vary attractive shopping complex (I realise it probably looked good when first built, it now looks like a shabby "cheap" shopping area).





I must admit what makes it worse is the awful brown building in front of the shopping complex, two photos here





Note this brown building is almost right opposite Moor St station. For many people who come up from London on Chiltern Railways it is one of the first things they see as they walk out the station.

Sadly this whole area is now pretty awful and if it is not developed the city will continue to have a poor reputation.

It needs doing (even though they say it will take 15 years!)

 

[Brookfields Lad]

Birmingham as a city is at a crossroads.

Currently it has a poor reputation amongst many people in the UK (I help on TripAdvisor forums a lot, and whenever anyone, from UK or abroad - says they want to visit Birmingham the general reply is "what on earth for").

Now the cities image is slowly improving, mainly due to developments over the last 30 years or so - the refurbishment of the canals, the ICC, the Symphony Hall, the NIA (Arena Birmingham), the BullRing, Grand Central (above New St station), the new library and so on.

Birmingham does not have a lot of history, it is a fairly recent city compared to York, Cambridge, Canterbury and so on, so we need other things to bring people to the city. This includes visitors and tourists as well as business people bringing their "head office" here.

Now I *AM* in favour of keeping historic buildings when they add something to the city - The council house, the BMAG, many of the buildings around Colmore Row etc.

However I am NOT in favour of keeping buildings just because they are old and add nothing to the city. For example I was glad when the 70s Madin library complex was knocked down as it added nothing to the city and opened up the route between the city centre and Westside.

For this city to succeed and grow it needs new office buildings. The reason HSBC came to the city was because they could build a new office building. Birmingham is competing against cities all over the world and you only have to look at some of the amazing developments in places like Hong Kong, Malaysia, China etc to realise to compete we have to have new developments.

Now nobody is going to bring their company to Birmingham just because we kept a shopping development from the 1960s. However they MIGHT if there were brand new office in its place, and even better if it is right opposite the HS2 station and less than an hour to London.

Of course HS2 might get cancelled, but then Birmingham remains a not very attractive city 100 miles from London. Its chance to grow and thrive will be lost.

Few photos below of why I think this development should go ahead.

First an aerial view of the total site.

View attachment 136160

Next a couple of photos of the not vary attractive shopping complex (I realise it probably looked good when first built, it now looks like a shabby "cheap" shopping area).

View attachment 136161

View attachment 136162

I must admit what makes it worse is the awful brown building in front of the shopping complex, two photos here

View attachment 136163

View attachment 136164

Note this brown building is almost right opposite Moor St station. For many people who come up from London on Chiltern Railways it is one of the first things they see as they walk out the station.

Sadly this whole area is now pretty awful and if it is not developed the city will continue to have a poor reputation.

It needs doing (even though they say it will take 15 years!)

Totally agree with you.
Thanks for your reasoned comments.

 

[mikejee]

Guilbert
Cannot disagree with any of that. Would query what you mean by "However I am NOT in favour of keeping buildings just because they are old and add nothing to the city ". you follow that with the example of the awful monstrosity of the 1970s library. while i always hated it, I would not consider it to be old. To my mind most of the unpleasant buildings in the city would come from that period, and most would be no great loss. No doubt some architects would throw up their hands at this comment though

 

[Andy Foster]

Birmingham as a city is at a crossroads.

Currently it has a poor reputation amongst many people in the UK (I help on TripAdvisor forums a lot, and whenever anyone, from UK or abroad - says they want to visit Birmingham the general reply is "what on earth for").

Now the cities image is slowly improving, mainly due to developments over the last 30 years or so - the refurbishment of the canals, the ICC, the Symphony Hall, the NIA (Arena Birmingham), the BullRing, Grand Central (above New St station), the new library and so on.

Birmingham does not have a lot of history, it is a fairly recent city compared to York, Cambridge, Canterbury and so on, so we need other things to bring people to the city. This includes visitors and tourists as well as business people bringing their "head office" here.

Now I *AM* in favour of keeping historic buildings when they add something to the city - The council house, the BMAG, many of the buildings around Colmore Row etc.

However I am NOT in favour of keeping buildings just because they are old and add nothing to the city. For example I was glad when the 70s Madin library complex was knocked down as it added nothing to the city and opened up the route between the city centre and Westside.

For this city to succeed and grow it needs new office buildings. The reason HSBC came to the city was because they could build a new office building. Birmingham is competing against cities all over the world and you only have to look at some of the amazing developments in places like Hong Kong, Malaysia, China etc to realise to compete we have to have new developments.

Now nobody is going to bring their company to Birmingham just because we kept a shopping development from the 1960s. However they MIGHT if there were brand new office in its place, and even better if it is right opposite the HS2 station and less than an hour to London.

Of course HS2 might get cancelled, but then Birmingham remains a not very attractive city 100 miles from London. Its chance to grow and thrive will be lost.

Few photos below of why I think this development should go ahead.

First an aerial view of the total site.

View attachment 136160

Next a couple of photos of the not vary attractive shopping complex (I realise it probably looked good when first built, it now looks like a shabby "cheap" shopping area).

View attachment 136161

View attachment 136162

I must admit what makes it worse is the awful brown building in front of the shopping complex, two photos here

View attachment 136163

View attachment 136164

Note this brown building is almost right opposite Moor St station. For many people who come up from London on Chiltern Railways it is one of the first things they see as they walk out the station.

Sadly this whole area is now pretty awful and if it is not developed the city will continue to have a poor reputation.

It needs doing (even though they say it will take 15 years!)

Birmingham is indeed at a crossroads. The attitudes of Herbert Manzoni, the greatest disaster that ever hit this city, are back. "The whole place must be new, and it must look completely different...". Birmingham had a lot of history and still has some, though it's disappearing at a rate. It was one of the most important Victorian cities in Britain and indeed "the workshop of the world". That can bring visitors here. It was the time that Birmingham was great, the very essence of our city. Of your list of recent developments, only the refurbished canals are attractive. The ICC is by second rank architects (a scheme by Richard Rogers narrowly lost out). The NIA is horrible. The Bull Ring is third-rate developers' stuff. The one wonderful little building, the Spiral Cafe, has of course - this being Birmingham - been demolished. Grand Central is as bad. I'm glad you didn't mention the Digbeth Dalek. The attractive recent developments are of the eighties / nineties, the period after the Highbury Initiative: Brindleyplace, Victoria Square (if it survives the present changes). If you want to see how far we've fallen, compare Brindleyplace to the windy wastes of Eastside.

The Central Library was the finest building put up in Birmingham in the last fifty years. English Heritage twice recommended listing it, and were frustrated by cynical political lobbying. As a library (not the out-dated facilities, they could have been refurbished) it was a delight to use. Birmingham demolished it just as architecture of that period was becoming fashionable and liked. Its reputation in some influential quarters is now the city that got rid of its Brutalist masterpiece when smaller towns like Preston were finally coming to love theirs. And the demolition of the library followed the demolition of John Madin's Post and Mail building of 1963, the finest sixties office block in the city, a sleek, elegant New York style wonder. No wonder we're seen as a philistine and ugly place.

Birmingham may need some new office buildings but it is often better to refurbish older buildings because they can accommdate the smaller businesses which the city needs and which require lower rents to be viable. And the enormous and architecturally dead developments which are damaging this city at the moment - Eastside Locks, Shadwell Street - are apartment blocks which will be out of reach of most Brummies' pockets. Corporation Square refurbished could be attractive to smaller businesses and as elegant as it was before it was titivated-up in the eighties. That facing stone is better than anything we get these days. I agree with one part of your post: the brown building on Dale End is a horror. The sooner it goes the better. But the attitudes which produced it were like the ones in your paragraph starting "For a city to succeed...". Curious that Paris and Rome do things differently, and thrive.

 

[Radiorails]

Birmingham as a city is at a crossroads.

Currently it has a poor reputation amongst many people in the UK (I help on TripAdvisor forums a lot, and whenever anyone, from UK or abroad - says they want to visit Birmingham the general reply is "what on earth for").

Now the cities image is slowly improving, mainly due to developments over the last 30 years or so - the refurbishment of the canals, the ICC, the Symphony Hall, the NIA (Arena Birmingham), the BullRing, Grand Central (above New St station), the new library and so on.

Birmingham does not have a lot of history, it is a fairly recent city compared to York, Cambridge, Canterbury and so on, so we need other things to bring people to the city. This includes visitors and tourists as well as business people bringing their "head office" here.

Now I *AM* in favour of keeping historic buildings when they add something to the city - The council house, the BMAG, many of the buildings around Colmore Row etc.

However I am NOT in favour of keeping buildings just because they are old and add nothing to the city. For example I was glad when the 70s Madin library complex was knocked down as it added nothing to the city and opened up the route between the city centre and Westside.

For this city to succeed and grow it needs new office buildings. The reason HSBC came to the city was because they could build a new office building. Birmingham is competing against cities all over the world and you only have to look at some of the amazing developments in places like Hong Kong, Malaysia, China etc to realise to compete we have to have new developments.

Now nobody is going to bring their company to Birmingham just because we kept a shopping development from the 1960s. However they MIGHT if there were brand new office in its place, and even better if it is right opposite the HS2 station and less than an hour to London.

Of course HS2 might get cancelled, but then Birmingham remains a not very attractive city 100 miles from London. Its chance to grow and thrive will be lost.

Few photos below of why I think this development should go ahead.

First an aerial view of the total site.

View attachment 136160

Next a couple of photos of the not vary attractive shopping complex (I realise it probably looked good when first built, it now looks like a shabby "cheap" shopping area).

View attachment 136161

View attachment 136162

I must admit what makes it worse is the awful brown building in front of the shopping complex, two photos here

View attachment 136163

View attachment 136164

Note this brown building is almost right opposite Moor St station. For many people who come up from London on Chiltern Railways it is one of the first things they see as they walk out the station.

Sadly this whole area is now pretty awful and if it is not developed the city will continue to have a poor reputation.

It needs doing (even though they say it will take 15 years!)

Those concrete building, cliff face architecture, (actually some cliffs I know look better) soon deteriorate in appearance. The others look like multi storey car parks, but I am sure they are not.
It is essential that the first impressions to anywhere are vitally important and hopefully that will be a priority consideration with new developments in Birmingham. Sadly Birmingham still does have an 'old image' and even some of the newer developments do not appear to have too sympathetic to the eye.
I believe wide open spaces can be draughty, particularly in winter; there does need to be some physical breakups of those areas - trees or small structures - I also do not like to see very tall buildings being situated close - and subsequently over shadowing - more historically important and superb architecturally buildings.

 

[sospiri]

The problem is that the centre of Birmingham has been a vast bombsite since 1959 - sixty years of upheaval and they are nowhere near completing it. At least another 20 years to go as I see it. The arguable advantages of the city ring road have been more than swallowed up by the vast increase in the amount of traffic. Nothing is more off-putting to the visitor, or for that matter the people living there, than permanent roadworks and a demolition landscape.

I don't like the outside of the new library, but I realise that that is subjective, but the vast cost now means that they can't afford to staff the place and the citizens are paying vast amounts in interest alone. HS2 did not have many supporters and if the current government don't cancel it, it is quite possible that a future government will, whatever the costs of compensation to the parties involved. Office blocks bring some jobs, but many of the senior positions are given to staff brought in from their head offices in London or wherever. I'm just wondering what the citizens of Birmingham get from all this bombsite mania. If the citizens are not getting much from it, visitors will get even less.

Maurice