Option JQ3
Original Document
Jewellery Quarter: a specialist shopping and tourist destination. There would be a strong impetus towards encouraging specialist and niche retailing on the ground floors, particularly in the historic parts of the quarter. The range of shopping would go beyond jewellery to include, for example, niche fashion goods. A focus for retailing would be identified, with associated signage, parking and public realm improvements. The aim would be twofold: this would become Birmingham’s upmarket niche and specialist shopping area; and the initiative would encourage more people into the quarter to sustain the historic building stock and raise the national profile of the area. This option would work well with option 2, which would bring spending power into the quarter.
Plain English Translation
Jewellery Quarter: a specialist shopping and tourist destination.
With this option we imgaine the Jewellery Quarter as Birmingham’s centre for upmarket and niche shopping.
We would encouraging specialist and niche retailers to set up shop on the ground floors of the historic parts of the quarter. Not just jewellers but fashion goods and other stores. We also make the area more appealing to shoppers by improving the streets, signs, parking etc. We think this would encourage more people into the area, help to protect the historic building stock and raise the national reputation of the Jewellery Quarter. This would complement option 2, which would bring spending power into the quarter.
I think the connectivity between the CBD on Colmore Row and the JQ area around Ludgate Hill and St Paul's square is very important.
At the moment Great Charles Street provides a barrier for people wlaking downhill between St Philip's Cathedral and St Paul's Church.
There were plans for a bridge over Great Charles Street, however I think a bridge is inadequate if we want the JQ to become an extension to the Colmore Row Conservation Area.
I think it is really important that people are able to walk unhindered across Great Charles Street at Ludgate Hill and Newhall Street.
How this is done is a problem as the entrance/exit to the Queensway Tunnel is right at the point where people would walk into the JQ.
Perhaps we could fill in the tunnel from Paradise Circus up to Snow Hill and make traffic go underground to enable people to walk from St Philips to St Pauls?
The other thing that occurred to me is that there is an opportunity to build a new 'Museum of Manufacturing' to celebrate Birmingham's role as the pre-eminent industrial city, the 'Workshop of the World' in the 'City of a 1000 Trades' on the site in Ludgate Hill/ Great Charles Street, where the coach station was due to go previously.
I think Abstract Land own that site, and have plans for an office development. With the downturn ' Public Sector' infrastructure projects are hoped to stimulate the economy-I can think of no better site for a Museum of Manufacturing near to the old Science Museum and in the JQ to stimulate development in the JQ