Wolves Joins The Skyscraper Club
Wolverhampton is to join the exclusive club of skyscraper cities thanks to a £250M residential scheme at Brewery Wharf.
The development is by Court Collaboration and designed by Glancy Nicholls Architects.
The Brewers Yard scheme is proposed for 10 acres of brownfield land neighbouring the University of Wolverhampton’s Springfield Campus.
The scheme is aiming to deliver some of the city of Wolverhampton’s tallest towers, set alongside outstanding public realm. CGIs and comparisons with other buildings suggest 25 to 30 storeys, according to observers.
It will see a mixture of 1,100 city houses and apartments, and 60K SF of commercial floorspace close to the city’s new £150M transport interchange.
Today Wolverhampton barely makes it into the skyscraper league: the tallest building, completed in 2009, is the 246 foot Liberty Heights at Victoria Halls, a student housing block. Victoria Halls would not make it into the top 10 of Birmingham towers standing today, and barely scrape the top 40 if those under construction, planned and proposed are included.
The Brewers Yard scheme is a joint venture between developer Court Collaboration, the City of Wolverhampton Council and the West Midlands Combined Authority, with works set to start on-site in 2020.
Brewers Yard is part of £4.3B of investment in Wolverhampton, council leaders said.
Wolverhampton is beginning to gain traction among developers, thanks in large part to the extension of the Midlands Metro and a new £150M railway station. Work on-site at the station began in September and is due for completion in 2020.
The city is seeing its first speculative office development in Wolverhampton since the early 1990s. In February 2018 Wolverhampton City Council agreed to borrow £13M to forward purchase a 47K SF speculative office development on a former car park at Railway Street.
