Go West Midlands

At MIPIM, Advantage West Midlands and its regional partners showcased four key sites with a total development value of around £545m:

- Bilston Urban Village near Wolverhampton will create a modern urban community over the next ten years as 100 acres of largely derelict land is transformed to include over 1,000 homes and new leisure and health centres.

- i54 covers a huge 220 acre brownfield site on the border of South Staffordshire and Wolverhampton which will become a high quality business park, employing some 6,000 people, by 2020.

- The £40 million Chatterley Valley scheme in Stoke is a 40 acre site expected to create 1,000 jobs.

- Edgar Street Grid Retail Quarter, covering 12 acres, will be the first phase in a massive 100 acre development which will transform Hereford city centre.

- Transforming brownfield land is one of Advantage West Midlands’ key objectives and we have an impressive record in bringing jobs and prosperity to derelict sites.

- The former auction yard in Craven Arms in Shropshire is now a multi-use scheme incorporating offices, retail and housing.

- The former Foleshill gasworks in Coventry is now home to the Ricoh Arena.

- Birmingham’s Fort Dunlop once a painful reminder of industrial decline, is now a thriving office and retail scheme symbolising the renaissance and success of the region.

- Eastside, one of Europe’s biggest regeneration schemes, is making excellent progress. A joint venture between Advantage West Midlands and Birmingham City Council at Ventureast is set to create more than 5,000 technology-driven jobs in what will be a national exemplar of sustainable development.

- The emerging Learning and Leisure Quarter – already home to the New Technology Institute and Matthew Boulton College – which is helping to bridge the gap between the city centre and Eastside, while the proposed City Park will take the transformation of this part of Birmingham even further.

And the pace of development shows no sign of slowing. Advantage West Midlands has recently announced a groundbreaking property regeneration partnership with Langtree Group plc and Bank of Scotland.

Called PxP, the scheme aims to speed up the delivery of development projects on selected sites within the Agency’s £160m property portfolio and create thousands of jobs.

It will take over responsibility for the development of eight of Advantage West Midlands’ development projects, including the 22-acre LDV site in Birmingham and the 20-acre Bromsgrove Technology Park. The joint venture presents an exciting opportunity to contribute to the continuing renaissance of the West Midlands region.

It also exemplifies the ambitious and innovative thinking with is attracting inward investment to the region:

- Latest figures (May 2007) reveal that Advantage West Midlands has helped attract 35 investments by foreign-owned companies into the region in the past year, creating or safeguarding more than 2,000 jobs.

- For the financial year 2006-07, a total of 2,500 jobs were created as a result of inward investment to the region and a further 11,996 safeguarded. In its role working overseas to promote the region and generate investment, Advantage West Midlands was directly involved in projects which saw 1,879 jobs created and 211 safeguarded.

- Overall, in the three years since the launch of the campaign to promote the West Midlands region, some 11,364 jobs have been created or safeguarded by Advantage West Midlands, the best three-year series since the Agency was established in 1999.