What they actually mean is “certainly not second to Manchester”. Yet, at the start of this year, it was the North West’s hub that was ahead of the office development game. While most UK cities are faced with a shortage of brand new stock, GVA research shows that on 1 January 2015, 614,000 sq ft was under construction in Manchester, compared to just 86,000 sq ft in Birmingham.
So what is going on? It certainly cannot be down to a lack of demand. On top of several widely known lease event-driven requirements fast approaching, a number of other major office requirements have recently surfaced, such as Project Mercury, the 350,000 sq ft requirement for a corporate client of JLL which is looking for space in the Birmingham/Coventry/Banbury triangle – half of which it needs to take by the autumn. Some big names are rumoured to be circling, but they won’t necessarily land in Birmingham unless it can prove it can deliver the product.
For me, there is no question that it can, yet the city seems to have been experiencing something of a crisis of confidence, having been burned by an oversupply of accommodation when the global economy went off a cliff. But so were other cities, including Manchester. And they dusted themselves down and are gunning for a comeback. The fact that Birmingham has been slower to react in this way cannot even be pinned on a recalcitrant local authority. Local commentators speak highly of the regeneration efforts of the city council, which continues to lead strategically, as the launch of the £600m, 20-year Snow Hill masterplan earlier this month showed.
Trying to pin down the source of the inertia may, happily, prove unnecessary, as since the beginning of this year things have really begun to change at a pace.
For a start there has been a flurry of planning application submissions – for example, Arena Central Developments which earlier this month submitted a planning application for the next wave of office development – 2 Arena – at the 2.3m sq ft mixed-use scheme.
It is aiming to beat rival Paradise (formerly known as Paradise Circus) to practical completion. And word on the street is that Ballymore is aiming to significantly increase its planned Three Snowhill office development to around 360,000 sq ft.
With speculative construction starts of both brand new and high–quality refurbished space almost certain in the next six months, Birmingham appears to be back in the race. This is good news for the West Midlands. What it needs now is for that confidence to filter through to other regional centres such as Coventry, the Black Country and Stoke.
