Paradise Birmingham

By Ross Fittall, Director, Argent

Our second Topping Out, held on the top floor of Two Chamberlain Square, underlines the momentum building around Paradise and how far we have come since construction began in 2015.

Not only is this a chance to celebrate the work undertaken so far, it’s an opportunity to look forward to what is to come. We now have two buildings out of ten almost complete.

But there is much more to look forward to.

Milestones are crucially important to projects like this. Not only do they tell everybody about the progress being made, but they also allow those involved to measure how much closer they are to turning a development site into a new city centre destination.

At Paradise that is the most important part of what we are doing.

Yes, we are constructing commercial buildings like Two Chamberlain Square that offer cutting edge new office space. And yes, while that is important for realising the jobs, skills and economic benefits of the development, Paradise is ultimately about much more than that.

Building a new neighbourhood for Birmingham that pays its respects to the amazing Victorian architecture that surrounds it, is vital. We want the 17 million people who walk through Paradise every year to stop, linger, and most of all, enjoy and appreciate this wonderful part of the city.

That may be through visiting an exhibition at BMAG, watching a performance at the Town Hall, or spending time in the enhanced Chamberlain Square. Whether you want to catch breakfast, lunch, dinner or simply enjoy a drink, there are many new restaurants, cafes and bars on their way.

We want the public to be able to take for granted the new spaces we are creating, the new opportunities to enjoy food and drink. We want people to have somewhere they can simply sit and watch the world go by.

We want a living, breathing series of public spaces that will evolve over time so they become somewhere where art exhibitions can take place or major events in the life of the city witnessed.

But Paradise must be a hard-working place too in the sense of jobs and skills creation. The development has enormous potential to create thousands of new jobs that in turn spread economic benefit far beyond the city centre.

The Topping Out serves to remind us of how far we have come in achieving those aims. But it’s also a chance to look ahead too – to the openings to come and the further topping out ceremonies that will follow.

We have a very exciting 2019 planned with plenty of activity happening on site and lots of announcements to make that will show exactly how we are continuing to shape and evolve what is already one of the largest and most exciting city centre developments in the whole of the UK.

The Topping Out of Two Chamberlain Square is just the latest in a long list of milestones.