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The announcement in March of a High Speed Rail link into central Birmingham has forced the council to rethink its regeneration masterplan. Lisa Pilkington reports
Birmingham's property fraternity will now have to wait until September to discover the contents of the next, more detailed, stage of Birmingham council's £17bn Big City Plan.
Stage two was due to be launched this month. But in March, just days after Waheed Nazir, the council's head of regeneration, spoke exclusively to Estates Gazette about his first three months as the man in charge of the BCP1 the then Labour government announced ptans for a High Speed Rail route linking London to the north via Birmingham.
It was great news for the city, but the proposed rail terminus cut right across the £6bn regeneration plans for the Eastside area. The result was that several sites were instantly blighted.
Swift action
With criticism from the city's property industry about the council's perceived lack of progress with the BCP ringing in his ears, Nazir took swift action. Within weeks he commissioned Birminghambased Glenn Howells Architects to re-masterplan the whole of the 420-acre Eastside area (see box).
When the work is completed this month, Nazir intends to go through the finer details with Eastside's landowners before they are released to the rest of the city in the autumn.
"I've met the developers from Eastside," says Nazir. "They want to be more involved and engaged with the re-masterplanning process, which is absolutely right. The HS2 announcement obviously has its challenges. For example, Birmingham City University was literally about to start on site for its new campus in April. We're now working with them to find a solution, which...