A team from Nottingham City Council attended the country’s biggest annual investment event UKREiiF this week, to promote the city, its opportunities and collaboration with key stakeholders.
The UK’s Real Estate Investment & Infrastructure Forum (UKREiiF) brings people together from across the UK, including the Government, councils, investors, funders, developers, housebuilders and more, to highlight investment and development opportunities.
The Nottingham team, which included the council’s Chief Executive Mel Barrett, Leader Cllr David Mellen and Corporate Director for Growth and City Development Sajeeda Rose, helped to showcase current and future development opportunities as part of the city’s £4bn development programme. The biggest of these are the two huge regeneration schemes – Broad Marsh and The Island Quarter.
Together the new developments would provide over 7,000 new homes, 15,000 new jobs and create two million square feet of new office and commercial floor space.
This includes transforming the 20-acre Broad Marsh site to offer social and economic opportunity on an unprecedented and historic scale, with significant development already completed, including the new Nottingham College City Hub and a state-of-the-art car park and bus station and major improvements to the public realm. Plus, work on the new ‘Green Heart’ public space starts and the new Nottingham Central Library opens this year.
The 36-acre Island Quarter site is also being totally transformed to bring new homes, grade-A office space, creative spaces, a lifestyle hotel, private apartments and co-working space, retail units, a ‘linear’ park and vibrant community and event space, as well as student accommodation to the city. Plus, at UKREiiF it was announced that Nottingham City Council had given the go ahead for developers The Conygar Investment Company PLC to build a build 245,000 sq ft bioscience facility on The Island Quarter.
In addition to Broad Marsh and The Island Quarter, key sites include the Nottingham Waterside development; the University of Nottingham’s new Castle Meadow campus and Unity Square phase two alongside phase one, the new HMRC offices.
Also at the event, the Leader of Nottingham City Council, Mel Barrett was invited to join a panel to discuss devolution and its benefits to the country, the region and the city.
He was joined on stage by both the Mayor of the West Midlands Combined Authority and the Mayor of the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority, where he discussed the plans for an East Midlands Combined County Authority.
Nottingham City Council, alongside Derbyshire County Council, Nottinghamshire County Council and Derby City Council have agreed to a £1.14 billion devolution deal by the Government.
The deal would create the first ever Combined County Authority and would see an extra £38 million a year coming to the East Midlands from 2024, addressing years of historically low investment in our area.
UKREiiF is an important event for the city, to support plans and visions for transformation and to help bring in further investment into the city.