A strategic exploration of Nottingham’s green Broadmarsh ideas
I want to preface this piece by saying I am a six-year Nottingham resident who has done various research projects within Nottingham looking at inclusion and improving the city centre. This is written from my own personal perspective, with the intention of adding to the existing conversation about the regeneration of Nottingham’s Broadmarsh area following the collapse of INTU’s redevelopment when they handed the site back to Nottingham City Council.
This piece looks at the strategic vision for the Broadmarsh and how any greening of the existing site could fit in with the overall holistic feel of Nottingham as a city. I frame it within a perspective of the current 2021 Covid-19 economic recession, collapse in physical retail, and the financial hole Nottingham City Council finds itself in due to various business dealings over the last decade. While it is easy to see these as potentially insurmountable strategic obstacles, I do not believe that they will ultimately hinder a green vision of the existing site.
The primary question with the Broadmarsh site is not what could be done with it, as there are as many answers as there are citizens, but rather, given the finances and timeframe available, what would be the best scope and fit for the site. At the heart of this post is a user/citizen-centric approach that considers the needs of Nottingham’s citizens holistically, with a critical eye on both past infrastructure failures and the future needs of a city that is at an inflection point.
Three critical points need to be made:
The Broadmarsh site is topographically challenging, as it runs up a hill towards the city centre, while at the same time it is bounded by two key roads that carry traffic around the heart of the city and would likely not be pedestrianised. This bounding, while allowing creative solutions, means that any redevelopment will need to interlink existing infrastructure into the site without choking the flow from the lower portion of the city centre into the heart of the city.
Nottingham’s two university’s make up a significant portion of income generation. A critical housing issue in the city has been housing market squeeze caused by the churn of 60,000 students drawn into Nottingham Trent and the University of Nottingham. A Nottingham City Council strategic goal attempts to retain these students once they graduate, helping grow and drive forward Nottingham’s economy. However, due to the lack of social housing in or near the city centre, many long-term city residents struggle to find affordable housing near their place of employment, and even with great public transport this leads to a lower quality of life and tougher work-life balance.
The outer wards and wider-Nottingham metropolitan area depend on local businesses. Nottingham city centre has the Victoria Centre as its destination shopping centre, which is increasingly sucking in all viable physical shops into its vacant units. This has left significant vacancies across the city centre, while at the same time drawing in trade from consumers living in out lying areas. Additional retail space, even if expansions of local business moving into new premises, risks further sucking trade from local retailers. The same goes for makerspaces and the green economy, because there is only a finite amount of investment capital available for direct investment.
Strategically, then, what should the Broadmarsh be? Is it of the people, serving the needs of local citizens? Is it a tourist destination? A hybrid space within in mixed use is developed? The needs of 2021 are most certainly going to be different from the needs of 2061 and given that the current Broadmarsh site has been in existence for nearly 50, it is worth considering this further.
While a green economy is most certain going to be in effect by 2040 due to the UK government’s climate commitments, a rush to implement green buildings using current technology risks having to redevelop that infrastructure around 2040 once technology moves forward. This is especially true given the nature of urban buildings and the pace of change with energy production (such as windows that produce solar power), and that while a lot of the proposed designs for the Broadmarsh account for current technologies, how upscalable are those ideas?
This issue ties in with the problems that Nottingham City Council has run into with the Meadows 1970s estate, the removal of the Great Central Railway from the city centre (including the removal of Nottingham Victoria station), and a host of other short-term wins that have led to significant legacy costs. The Broadmarsh centre is a case in point, as it served the needs of the 1970s and 80s citizens, but ultimately is a symbol of expedience over strategy. Not to belabour the point, but even if the Broadmarsh site could be rejuvenated into a green and pleasant land within the next two years, given the budget restraints and overarching UK economy there is significant risk that what is put onto the site will only be fit once more for the near-term.
There are numerous options proposed for the greening of the site, trending along the following themes:
Retail space for green and local businesses. This would see the existing site torn down and redeveloped as an eco-hub within which commercial businesses can sell, and possibly low-key manufacture, goods. This assumes that there will be enough businesses willing to invest in units, and enough footfall to justify the expense. In turn, given that these new units will sit just off the existing city centre, they will be competing for traffic with established businesses, which could exacerbate the current physical shopping decline by splitting revenue. In additional, rates and rents are high, and unless the developers are willing to take a long view on financing, whoever trades on the redeveloped site will be on the hook for those costs. This means that only businesses that are capable of higher turnovers are going to be longitudinal viable, dampening the ability of artisanal retailers to compete in the space. In addition, the redeveloped Carrington area and Future of the High Street Nottingham area will directly compete with whatever goes into the Broadmarsh site.
Housing. Given the pressing need for more social housing within the Nottingham metropole, green housing solutions would be a viable use of the site. Nottingham City Council has invested heavily in green homes throughout the city, and green housing on this site would be beneficial to Nottingham citizens. However, a critical issue with this comes back to cost and market expectations. Rents within the city centre are significantly higher than beyond the periphery, and any new housing projects will need to be tightly controlled to avoid pricing out those most in need. Strategically, this could also run into issues with developers, as if any private sector investor is involved in a PPI model there could be demands to unlock some, or most, of the housing to the private sector.
Parkland and urban farms. These ideas play into the notion that Nottingham needs more green spaces, especially in the urban centre, and that this in turn would attract both tourists and citizens. The nature of the site has been urban built-up structures dating back to at least the 17th Century. To regenerate the site a significant amount of brown site clean-up would be needed, including the removal of industrial quantities of concrete and other environmentally unfriendly materials. However, this is not to say that the site cannot be reclaimed. In Bestwood and Rise Park Nottingham has a history of reclaiming industrial sites for the use of citizens, and while the initial expense could be significant, turning the site into parkland could longitudinally be the least risky option of the site.
Urban farming has been suggested as a use for the site, though given the actual topography of the site unless it was more of an archology it would be a complicated infrastructure to effectively implement. This is not to say that an urban farm could not be feasible, but it would require a level of development that may meet other strategic aims, such as flow through into the city, stimulating jobs, providing a green space, and allowing for a long-term strategic vision to be implemented.
Mixed use site. Strategically, this would appear to be the maximalist approach, one that would win over the most stakeholders, and potentially be the best short-term option of the site. By creating mixed use, such as a hybrid retail/housing space, or retail/park, the site would be able to benefit a significant number of citizens in the near-to-medium term. In addition, a mixed-use retail/housing/park would allow for a public/private partnership that could help fund the whole project and off-set many of the negatives associated with a single use of the site. However, this in turn allows for scope creep, cost over-runs, and potential clouding of a single vision, which in turn invites short-termism to creep in.
Risks:
Strategically, the biggest hurdle in 2021 is Nottingham City Council’s finances. Whatever funding for the Broadmarsh redevelopment must come from somewhere, and if those funds are directly from the Council it will have to be redirected from other pots, possibly at the cost of current user services. There is significant risk in green lighting a project, like the Council did with INTU and the terminated Broadmarsh redevelopment, and the Council either runs out of money or there are significant delays once more to any development on site.
Added to this is the ongoing decline of physical shopping on Britain’s highstreets. Brexit and Covid have sped up the process, and though things are likely to tick up, Nottingham cannot rely on commercial retails coming back into the city centre in significant numbers unless rates and rents are drastically cut. Most major urban centres face the same issue, and while the Kings Cross redevelopment showed that inviting tech companies and other innovative firms in can succeed, if any Broadmarsh redevelopment is anchored in retail or makerspaces then a sound long-term business case must be made that can account for this decline.
Tourism, retail, manufacturing, and education have been the lynchpins of Nottingham’s post-industrial economy. Each of them is undergoing seismic changes due to Covid and Brexit, with even the education sector possibly contracting faster than anyone expected due to the loss of overseas income. While it would be wonderful to reimagine the Broadmarsh as an inflection of some or all of these, the likelihood is that even in five years time Nottingham’s economy is going to be structurally different. This is not to say that a green Broadmarsh could not act as a catalyst, but in 2024 there will be a UK general election that could completely sweep away the current economic model the present UK government utilise. The risk is that any project green lit in 2021 or 2022 could be rendered moot or financially unviable in 2024 or 2025.
Conclusion
While I have not really addressed the green issues associated with greening the Broadmarsh, as I feel they pretty much speak for themselves, I do feel that there are significant short-term risks that preclude any ready solution. The most critical is financing anything above a reclamation of the site, as unless the UK central government or an institutional backer step-in, Nottingham City Council simply do not have the funds to execute a longitudinal project that would have meaningful impact.
Therefore, based on the evidence in hand, the best strategic plan for 2021/22 would be to secure the site, make it safe, and if the funds are available to do brownfield clearance. Once this is done park the side until 2024 or 2025 until Brexit, Covid, and the UK government have settled. While a three year wait is frustrating, strategically and economically it will put both Nottingham City Council and the UK economy on a far better footing. At which point a fully fleshed out plan can be executed with a clear long-term strategic vision. This does not stop ideas, plans, and schemes to be discussed, indeed, it gives three or four years to better develop ideas and technology. Waiting three years and allowing strategic clarity is far better than rushing in and wasting time, money, and good-will.
