Revamps are being co-coordinated by Birmingham council. Planned project include £350m facelift of NewStreet Station. All this will increase public self confidence, especially after Birmingham suffered setbacks following losing the motor show to London, failing to win nomination as European Capital of Culture in 2008 and coming second to Wembley to build a national football stadium.

With Manchester growing and the planned development of Milton Keynes business leaders see this as a competitive threat.

The £38m grant from Advantage West Midlands, a public sector body, to buy land for the eight-acre park and for a technology-based development, is small. But it is an indicator that an ambitious plan to regenerate the grimy Eastside industrial district is gaining momentum. The council has appointed planners to design an important segment of the new Eastside, a "learning and leisure quarter" expected to cost £250m.

Earlier this month work began on a £350m redevelopment of the Masshouse area, which connects Eastside to the city centre.

Birmingham is facing many challenges that include how to make it easy for pedestrians to get about as the road network favours motorists rather than pedestrians. Visits to the city are disappointing despite the £165m Millennium Point attraction place there as a lure.

On the plus side for small business and businesses generally Argent, which built the successful Brindley place office complex, a kind of mini-Broad gate beside a canal, wants to put up more offices at Paradise Circus.

An expansion in prime office space is sorely needed. According to Simon Murphy, chief executive of Birmingham Forward, a trade body, 150,000 people work in the professional services sector in Birmingham "and it will employ another 50,000 over the next five years".

David
Small Business Resource