Birmingham’s burgeoning culinary reputation is set to be further enhanced after plans for a ‘foodie’ hub in the heart of one of the city’s smartest suburbs were unveiled.
Neil Edginton, who is director at The Cube, wants to transform the old Victorian school with its distinctive clock tower on Harborne High Street into a mixed use scheme with up to three restaurants, a cookery school, a public square and 10 luxury apartments.
The Clock Tower building - which has been under scaffolding for more than 18 months because of structural problems - is owned by Birmingham City Council, which chose Mr Edginton’s company EDG Properties in an open competition to develop the site.
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“It is very exciting to have been selected to develop this historic site in one of the city’s most sought after areas,” said Mr Edginton, who has been working with Bob Ghosh from K4 Architects.
“For the last couple of years we have been looking at opportunities in the city and this is undoubtedly one with the most potential.
"We are now looking forward to working with the local community and the wider city before taking our ideas to planning and hopefully delivering a scheme that everyone can be proud of.”
Under the proposals a new food school would be created called ‘Kitchen’ which would work in partnership with University College Birmingham and signature chefs from across the city to create a ‘community interest company’ that would be open to customers who wanted to learn from award-winning chefs to groups of children from local schools.
Jayne Bradley, from Kitchen, said: “It is predicted that by 2030, 60 per cent of children in the 海角视频 will be obese.
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"The food agenda and its direct link to the health of the nation is now nationally recognised at the highest level. Kitchen has been established to bring a new dimension to Birmingham, offering routes to good food and top chefs through teaching food skills.
"We believe Kitchen will be held up as an exemplar around the country and are delighted to be launching in Harborne.”
David Colcombe, spokesman for the Birmingham Chefs Alliance, said the new development was a “fantastic” addition to the city’s growing food culture.
The city was recently described by the BBC’s Olive magazine as the 海角视频’s top ‘foodie’ town, while a recent article in the New York Times put Birmingham in its top 20 places to visit in the world because of its food scene.
Colcombe, chef director at Opus restaurant, said: “People are coming into the city now because of its food and it is exciting that people are talking about food.
“This sort of thing would never have happened five or 10 years ago in Birmingham.
“If our food revolution is expanding further afield to the suburbs like Harborne it has got to be good for all of us involved in the restaurant business.
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“The education of the public is very important and if the school improves food education we will all be very supportive about it.
“The chefs of Birmingham will be supportive of all these different projects and we look forward to seeing how the scheme develops.”
The £5 million ‘School Yard’ scheme will also see the restoration of the old caretaker’s house fronting on to the High Street as well as the creation of two restaurants on the same frontage, either side of the clock tower.
The clock tower itself will be restored and will provide the entrance to a public square on the old school playground, at the rear of which will be a new build block of 10 high specification apartments and potentially a third restaurant at ground level.
The food school will front the square internally and York Street.
The council has been looking for a solution in breathing new life into the prime site after it was forced to encase the building in scaffolding to support the structure as well as protect the public from falling masonry - costing the council more than £12,000 per week.
Council leader Mike Whitby, who is also a councillor for Harborne, said the project was a winner on a number of levels.
“The ‘School Yard’ proposals are extremely exciting, and will no doubt elevate Harborne’s status, and enhance it as a major destination for culinary excellence," he said.
"The Clock Tower is a very important building for Harborne and revitalising it is fundamental for the High Street - and I am so pleased to see proposals which bring it back into use by returning it to its educational roots.”
Mr Edginton was previously a director of Birmingham Development Company, which delivered the Mailbox and the Cube, and was retained as a director of the Cube after BDC was put into administration by the building’s funders when the project was unfinished.
He has since overseen the successful delivery of the project and major lettings to the Highways Agency, the Law Society, Marco Pierre White and celebrity hairdresser Adee Phelan. Earlier in his career he was instrumental in delivering Fort Dunlop in a joint venture project with Urban Splash.