By Joe Locker, Local Democracy Reporter
Plans to keep much of Nottingham’s old Broadmarsh Centre frame as part of its regeneration have been ditched after developers said they weren’t prepared to back it over construction risks.
Demolition work will soon start on the rest of the site after the East Midlands Combined County Authority, headed by regional Labour mayor Claire Ward, agreed to give the council up to £3.4m to fund it on Monday (December 16).
A new vision for the area, which is one of the largest development spaces in any city city centre in Europe, was first unveiled by Nottingham City Council in 2021.
Several experts, including Sir Tim Smit of the Eden Project and urban designer Thomas Heatherwick, helped create the plan following a public consultation which amassed more than 3,000 responses.
Heatherwick’s original vision was to keep much of the shopping centre’s old frame, from where the Green Heart now stands, to Middle Hill.
However leader of the council, Cllr Neghat Khan, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service the vision was altered following concerns from potential developers.
“Initially in the vision it was about keeping it all, but we were looking at developers and the interest around that and there are a lot of risks to it, because it is a very old frame,” she said.
“Developers are a bit hesitant on that because who would insure you for that?
“This today, getting it past the initial stage to a business case, gives more certainty. It will actually escalate the development.
“Hopefully by the end of the financial year we will have some good news about who is taking on that site. We will have housing on there, leisure, business, office space, there might be some student accommodation.”
Former leader of the council, Jon Collins, who now works as a consultant for property firms, previously described the vision as “commercially undeliverable”, and the authority said it would be reviewing its plans.
“That concrete and steel frame was put up 50 to 60 years ago in the 1960s,” he told the LDRS in February.
“Nobody is going to take on the risk of taking on that frame. It’s about time people got real and said ‘lets demolish it’ and put some real buildings there.”
In May the council then unveiled its new masterplan for the site, which revealed a smaller section of the frame would be retained instead.
The council first reclaimed the site following the 2020 collapse of the Broadmarsh Shopping Centre’s former owner, intu, which had been in the process of regenerating it.
Construction firm Willmott Dixon finished demolishing a section of the shopping centre in 2022, before work on the Green Heart city park began.
While the Green Heart opened in September, there have been several setbacks in regenerating the wider site.
The Labour-run authority was denied £20m in Levelling Up funds on three occasions by the previous Conservative Government.
Then, in November last year, the council declared effective bankruptcy, and any new spending had to stop.
Mayor Claire Ward said the funding from her authority will help kick-start momentum to demolish a majority of the remaining frame, having described it as an “eyesore”.
“When the council applied for funding in the past it was turned down by Westminster and Whitehall – no understanding of what the real challenges are for places like the Broadmarsh and other areas, and what they need,” she added.
“What we can do here by making a decision to have investment into these types of projects is actually delivering the changes people want to see and I think that is what is different as a result of devolution.”
