04 September 2003

Birmingham’s £500m Bullring shopping centre reopens

The Bullring, the £500m shopping experience in Birmingham City, has opened its door to the public today.

Re-christened as a single word, the Bullring replaces the much-maligned Bull Ring, a building reviled as all that was wrong with 1960s British architecture.

Birmingham City council leader Sir Albert Bore unveiled a bronze statue of a bull at the site performed the opening ceremony in the complex’s 'Rotunda Square'.

The team behind the project, Birmingham Alliance, is fully confident that the massive scheme, equivalent to 26 football pitches of shopping space, will be a thriving success. The complex is anticipating up to 30 million visitors in its first year.

Project Director, Jon Emery said: “Bullring will bring Birmingham alongside other European cities as a major shopping destination.

“It’s the largest retail regeneration scheme in Europe for over a decade and is home to 150 additional stores for the city."

The first phase at the 40-acre site was a 5,500 sq m state-of-the-art indoor market housing 90 traders, which opened in September 2000. The second phase, at a cost of £100 million, was the 17,000 sq m Martineau Place scheme that opened in November 2001.

But the largest by far is the Bullring phase comprising 110,000 sq m of prime retail space over three trading levels.

The last phase, Martineau Galleries, involves a 14-acre site with 57,000 sq m of further retail and leisure developments.

Famously described as a “concrete carbuncle”, the former shopping centre building at the site was demolished in 1999 to make way for a recurved edifice of steel, glass and aluminium disks.

(SP)