Work is due to begin this autumn on the long-awaited regeneration of the southern gateway of Nottingham city centre set to transform the area.

David Bishop, Deputy Chief Executive of Nottingham City Council, told our Nottingham Development Plans Conference that the construction of a new car park for the city’s Broadmarsh Shopping Centre is on schedule to commence later this year, whilst the demolition of the car park and bus station is due to complete within the next few weeks.

The new car park is part of a wider programme to regenerate the south side of the city centre, which is currently blocked off from Nottingham Railway Station by the 1970s Broadmarsh Shopping Centre.

Bishop, who is also the council’s Corporate Director of Development and Growth, said that McAlpine has been secured as contractor for the redevelopment of the shopping centre following a two-stage tender process.

The £30m refurbishment and redevelopment of nearby Nottingham Castle, which the council is undertaking with the Heritage Lottery Fund, is due to start later this year.

Elsewhere in the city, dark fibre has been installed in the ducts underneath the city’s tram routes to improve the broadband connections between its science park.

Developer Miller Birch is expected to start on site in 2019 on its development of Guildhall, a city centre 41,000 sq ft development containing offices, student accommodation, a hotel and academic space.

The new owners of the 10 ha Island site, for which a new planning masterplan has been adopted, are expected to submit a planning application in June, whilst a number of developers are set to be bringing forward projects for the Waterside development.

Speaking of the continuing work to develop a metro strategy with neighbours Derby Council Bishop said: ‘’The identity of the two cities on either side of the HS2 line will be inextricably linked in 50 years’ time.

But East Midlands Councils have missed a trick by not collaborating to set up combined authorities, unlike their counterparts in other regions, with Bishop adding: ‘’Competition for investment across Europe is more about metropolitan areas than cities. East Midlands cities and counties must get their act together otherwise they will disappear in the world-wide competition for investment.’’

John van de Laarschot, Chief Executive Officer of Nottingham College, said that work a new flagship 150,000 sq ft City Hub building is due to start in the autumn of 2018. The £58m building, which is part of the council’s wider south side regeneration plans, would include a performance and media hub incorporating a theatre.

The college is in the ‘final throes’ of appointing a contractor through the public-sector Scape framework after deciding that it did not have enough time to pursue a competitive tender.

Enabling works have now begun and the prime contractor will be on site by the end of June, with a view to completing the building, which is designed by architects Bond Bryan, by mid-2020.

He said the opening of the new hub would allow the college to close three large ‘decrepit’ sites that are no longer viable.

Alex Hamlin, Development Manager of Blueprint and Igloo Regeneration, told the event that work should commence this summer of a pioneering group custom built residential project on a Nottingham city centre fringe site.

Regeneration Specialists Blueprint, which is a partnership between Nottingham Council and Places for People Housing Group, has recently receiving planning consent for its Fruit Market development. The company hope to start work in the summer on the project, which is next to the city’s historic wholesale fruit and vegetable market at Sneinton.

The 1.5-acre site, adjacent to the city’s Victoria Centre Shopping Mall, will be developed in three phases. Hamlin said that under the custom build model, Blueprint is acting as enabled-developer, establishing the principle of residential use on the site and putting in place a design code setting out location and massing of plots.

The idea then is that for each phase, groups of people will be assembled who will then design their own homes for which they will then seek detailed planning consent. Within parameters outlined in the design code, the home buyers will be able to choose the height and massing of their dwelling which can vary in size from 90 to 140 sq m.

Work is due to begin on the scheme this summer on the first phase which will cover 13 plots, and the second group of householders is currently being assembled, with Hamlin saying: ‘’They can have high degree of design input without having to go out and get their own architects.’’

He also highlighted other schemes Blueprint are bringing forward in Nottingham, including the award-winning Trent Basin waterside regeneration project, in which the third phase is set to commence this autumn. The next phase, which has planning permission, will begin once Blueprint gauge how well the market has responded to the second phase.

Phase one, which consisted of 41 medium density townhouses and terraced homes, had completed towards the end of 2016 and sold out within 12 months of going on the market. The second phase, which includes a number of larger, four-storey homes fronting on to the River Trent, is now on site.

Blueprint also hope to start on site this summer on its Trent Works scheme, which consists of around 20 four-bedroom houses that are designed with the aim of outperforming building regulations on thermal efficiency by 20%.

In terms of its future pipeline Blueprint are ‘hopefully’ looking soon at commercial as well as residential projects and at other cities in the East Midlands besides Nottingham.

Warren Manning, Pro Vice-Chancellor at the University of Derby, told the conference that capital investment in higher education would start to plateau over the next three years following continual increases over the last half decade saying: ‘’Now is the time in to invest because the investment rating is likely to go down in two to three years due to demographics, then recover from 2025 onwards.’’

Manning, who is also Dean of the College of Engineering and Technology, said the University is weighing up whether to focus its new investment on its existing main campus or closer to the city centre.