New College Nottingham and Central College have appointed a team of award-winning architects to take forward their plan for a ‘hub for skills’ in the city centre – which is being backed by the D2N2 Local Enterprise Partnership.
Bond Bryan, Sheffield-based architects with international offices, have won the project, in a highly competitive open design competition, and will add the ‘Nottingham College City Hub’ building to an already impressive collection of Nottingham projects under their belt.
This announcement comes as the two colleges continue to work towards the formal merger which will create Nottingham College. This new, single Further Education provider for the city will be responsive to the skills needs of employers, and will develop career pathways into the region’s established sectors and growing industries. The College campus sites will include the City Hub, as well as specialist Centres of Excellence across the city.
The City Hub will be part-funded by the D2N2 Local Enterprise Partnership (subject to business plan) and Nottingham City Council, and is a key aspect of the wider redevelopment of the southern gateway into the city.
D2N2 is the Local Enterprise Partnership covering Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. It is a private sector-led partnership of business, local authorities, skills and training providers, and communtiy and voluntary services which promotes economic and jobs growth across its area. D2N2 is proposing an investment of around £30million in the £60m City Hub; using its Local Growth Fund allocation, a fund used to jointly invest in infrastructure projects which directly help the local economy.
Associate Director for Bond Bryan, Matt Hutton, will be leading the City Hub project with ncn and Central, and is excited at the prospect of developing an iconic college campus building in his own back yard. Nottingham City Hub. Pictured above are Nottingham College Chief Executive John van de Laarschot, architect Matt Hutton and Nick Higgins, Nottingham College’s appointed Project Manager, overlooking the site off Canal Street where the college is to be located.
Matt said: “I’m a Nottingham lad, having grown up in Arnold and completed all my schooling here before going off to University in Leeds. I’ve done a lot of work with education projects including campuses and study centres in Sheffield, York, Corby, Bradford and here in Nottingham.
“The City Hub project has an ability to create an exciting destination for local businesses and education to mix, providing real benefit to skills and employment in the region. It is an exciting time for Nottingham and I’m extremely proud to be part of it’.
Bond Bryan’s success in the region includes the RIBA-shortlisted Nottingham University Academy of Science and Technology (NUAST) completed in 2016 and the recently-completed University of Nottingham Ingenuity Centre – an iconic three-storey building based at the University Innovation Park (UNIP). They are also on site with a pioneering Advanced Manufacturing Building for The University of Nottingham, on Derby Road, which will help to shape the future of the UK manufacturing sector.
The City Hub building is part of a wider regeneration scheme for the Broadmarsh area. The proposed site is steeped in history and is a focal point in Nottingham’s industrial heritage. In Victorian Britain the site housed some of the country’s worst slums and was a heaving thoroughfare of trade and business. Today, the area represents a prime redevelopment opportunity, adjacent to the soon-to-be-redeveloped Broadmarsh shopping centre, within a stone’s throw of the city’s main transport hub and on the edge of Nottingham’s Lace Market.
Matt added: “As an architect, it’s important to capture and understand the heritage of a particular site and having grown up here, I’m familiar with the stories of Broadmarsh and Narrow Marsh. The opportunity to transform an area that was once synonymous with poverty and limited life chances into a centre that will help unlock the potential of tens of thousands of young people in the coming years, is particularly exciting.”
Site work on the new campus building is due to get underway in 2018, with a completion date of 2020. Matt and his team will work towards finalising a design for the building to submit for outline planning permission later this year.
John van de Laarschot, Chief Executive of ncn and Central Colleges said: “Bond Bryan understand our aspiration for something truly iconic, something that does not simply fit the mould of a traditional college campus, but which provides a unique space in which business and education can co-exist and the relationship between the two can be strengthened. This Hub, and the services it will house, will provide real benefits to employers and students.
“Bond Bryan’s past work proves that it is possible to create modern learning environments that successfully bridge the gap between the workplace and education. Matt knows that I’d like students, staff and employers to have some input into the early design ideas, including the building, its surroundings and the internal facilities. When we put this Hub together with the College’s other Centres of Excellence located across the city, we will have one of the biggest and best-resourced further education institutions in the country.”
The intu Broadmarsh centre, car park and surrounding road space will be completely redeveloped as part of a £250m project to regenerate the area, creating a more welcoming and open environment for visitors from the southern part of the city. According to Nottingham City Council, the redevelopment of the area will bring around 2,900 more jobs, £25 million extra spending per year and attract three million more annual visitors to the city.
D2N2 is also investing more than £10million in the Broadmarsh area improvement works, again coming through its Local Growth Fund.
Media wanting to know more about the D2N2 LEP can contact Sean Kirby, D2N2 Communications Manager, on 0115 957 8749 or email: sean.kirby@d2n2lep.org
