Eastside City Park wins national award
Cllr Tahir Ali
Cllr Tahir Ali, Cabinet member development, jobs and skills, has hailed the success of Birmingham City Council's flagship £11.7m Eastside City Park which, six months since its completion, is receiving widespread praise, having won a raft of local and national industry awards.
The 6.2-acre park, the city's first urban park in 130 years, scooped up four awards at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Midlands and East Awards at a ceremony at Millennium Point last week.
Cllr Ali said: “Eastside City Park is at the heart of the regeneration of the area and I am very pleased to see the success of the city’s vision, as set out in the Big City Plan and Eastside Masterplan. It is a wonderful facility for Birmingham people, providing much more green space in the city centre. I look forward to the continued growth of Eastside as an integral part of the city centre for people to live and work in.”
The scheme, which was designed by Patel Taylor and was delivered by Wates Construction, was presented with the West Midlands Award, alongside the regional Client of the Year and Building of the Year Awards.
The development was also one of five projects to win a coveted RIBA National Award and is now shortlisted to compete against London's Olympic Park for a prestigious RIBA Stirling Award.
Eastside City Park was funded by Birmingham City Council with land acquisition for the park partly funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and Advantage West Midlands, the former Regional Development Agency.
Stretching from the city centre out into Eastside and flanked by Millennium Point, the park has achieved the council's vision to provide 14,300 sq m of landscaped green space for the community to enjoy. The scheme has been created in partnership with the council's construction services company, Acivico.
Features include 310 trees, formal lawns, public squares and a canal feature running 188m and incorporating 21 jet fountains. The park also incorporates the existing Science Garden by Gillespie’s, which forms part of the neighbouring Thinktank Birmingham Science Museum.
The development also recently won the Sustainability accolade and the Chairman's Award at the annual Institute of Civic Engineers West Midlands Awards. It also came 'Highly Commended' in the Regeneration category for the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Awards in May this year.
Andy Hands, Business Manager for Wates Construction, Midlands, commented: “Eastside City Park forms a significant part of Birmingham City Council's ongoing redevelopment of Eastside and the success it is now seeing is testament to the successful transformation of the area into an exceptional recreational space for local people. The investment at Eastside City Park is and will continue to be a catalyst for the area's social and physical regeneration and we are very proud to have been a part of this flagship scheme.”
The project has also been shortlisted for the national British Construction Industry (BCI) Awards in the Civic Engineering Project of the Year £3m to £50m category. The awards ceremony is to be held in London on 9 October this year.
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