900K SF Longbridge Business Park Plan Drives Forward
A long-derelict car plant associated with the heyday of West Midlands carmaking is to be redeveloped as 900K SF of commercial floorspace.
The once iconic but now derelict West Works site at the former MG Rover car plant in Longbridge, Birmingham, will also see the development of 350 homes.
The site has been vacant since the factory closed 15 years ago. Now a £6M investment from the West Midlands Combined Authority is paying for site cleaning and infrastructure ahead of development. The developer is St. Modwen, which bought the site in 2003.
Today’s deal follows the December 2020 award to the WMCA of £51M of Government funding for reclamation of brownfields, former industrial land such as the former MG Rover site.
At its height in the 1960s, Longbridge was one of the world’s biggest car factories, employing tens of thousands of people producing groundbreaking vehicles like the Mini. A steady decline over the 1980s and '90s led to the collapse of MG Rover in 2005.
The balance of the site has already been redeveloped by St. Modwen and now includes 1M SF of new commercial floorspace.