Alan Clawley wonders whether Birmingham city council’s time in the south of France might be better spent elsewhere. 

Now is the time of the year when all top property professionals, including some that work for the City Council, head off to Cannes for their annual outing in the spring sunshine. It’s ‘Le Merche International des Professionals de l’immobilier’, otherwise known in the trade as ‘MIPIM’.

MIPIM is a forum where property developers (and the City Council is one) show off their best projects in a bid to sell them to anyone with money to invest. Mike Whitby used it to boast about New Street Station and his new library as well as flourishing the government’s certificate that stopped the Central Library being listed for five years. This year it’s the turn of Curzon Station and HS2 and the council will present its recently-published computer-generated images (CGIs) of what they think it will look like.

Regular delegates to MIPIM will have already seen lots of CGIs of Argent’s proposals for Paradise Circus. In what looks like an attempt to maintain their interest, Argent will announce this year which of four architects will be invited to design something called a Public Area Scheme for the site.

I haven’t come across this term before but, according to the report in the Post (27the February), it‘s the ‘public space element’ of the proposals that were given Outline Planning Permission in December 2012.

The managing partner of Argent, David Partridge, said that all four short-listed architects had extensive experience of working on similar projects throughout the UK and each practice has been issued with a comprehensive brief containing the exacting requirements and constraints for the site. Just so!

I emailed Mr Partridge (3rd March) to ask if I could have a copy of the brief. and if it had a Public Consultation requirement built in. I invited him to agree that public consultation on such an important scheme would be essential before any design was finalised.

Who are these experts, one of which is to be entrusted with this important project? They are all large firms specialising in landscape design. Gillespies is based in London with offices in Glasgow, Manchester, Oxford and Leeds. It claims in its website to be committed to the creation of spaces that “respond to their community”. Grant Associates is based in Bath, with an office in Singapore. Gustafson Porter is London-based and was responsible for the famous Diana Price of Wales Memorial in Hyde Park. The trendy-sounding GROSS.MAX has won many awards and prizes for its work and is based in Edinburgh.

Whilst it is good to see a developer lavish attention on ‘landscape’ in advance of any buildings, there doesn’t seem much scope for the undoubted talents of landscape architects. The present Chamberlain Square can hardly be bettered. It is already a successful public area and is largely unaltered in the approved plans. There was more need to deal with the neglected public area round the back of the Central Library. The proposed spaces between the new buildings in Paradise Circus are rather modest. There is nothing like the main square in Brindley Place which has room for water features, large sculptures and even a coffee shop.

I suspect that the Public Area Scheme has been made public in the absence of progress on the buildings themselves. Why else would Argent need to announce the winning architects at MIPIM on 13th March?

Back in Birmingham, Argent’s partner, the City Council remains strangely silent on the subject of Paradise Circus. They are still waiting for a detailed planning application for the first building which it has always assumed would be the 23-storey Copthorne Hotel on the site of the Conservatoire. But first the Conservatoire has to find a new home. And it’s hard to envisage the Library being demolished when no detailed planning application has been made for a building to go on up in its place. David Partridge is reported to have said. “Having spent so many years working on the plans and proposals for Paradise Circus, it is particularly gratifying to be so close to seeing actual start of work on site”. Just how close remains to be seen.