Millennium Point is a decade old this year. Paul Dale reports on the £114 million project that raised strong passions
It is difficult to remember now, a decade later, the less than enthusiastic welcome given to Millennium Point by many people in Birmingham.
Traditionalists hated it because it had replaced the much-loved city centre Science Museum in Newhall Street.
Not only would visiting Millennium Point’s Discovery Centre involve a trek out to Eastside for goodness sake, you would have to pay for the privilege of inspecting the exhibits while the Science Museum had been free.
The mood hardened when it emerged that many of the dusty chunks of iron on display at the Science Museum, deemed by some to be the city’s industrial crown jewels, would not have a place at Millennium Point.
And a decision to change the name of the Discovery Centre to Thinktank was greeted with a howl of disapproval. Too trite and gimmicky for such a serious subject, it was claimed.
The box-like structure of the building did not go down well either, even though the architect, Nicholas Grimshaw, had received rave reviews for designing Waterloo Station’s International Terminal in London and the Eden Project in Cornwall. His efforts in Birmingham were derided as uninspiring.
Then there was what might be dubbed the middle class intelligentsia, who raised their eyebrows at Thinktank’s interactive exhibits designed to make science interesting for children. It became a clever thing at dinner parties to ask: “What’s the Millennium Point?”
A better question would have been, where is Millennium Point? Positioned in the centre of the Eastside regeneration area, surrounded by derelict buildings and barren development sites, the wrong side of the inner ring road, Millennium Point was never easy to find and still isn’t today.
Even now, despite many attempts to improve pedestrian signs from New Street, Moor Street and the Bullring, a sound grasp of map reading is required for even the most intrepid walker.
Tellingly, just over 70 per cent of visitors to Thinktank and the IMAX cinema arrive by car or coach, although since a high proportion are school children this is perhaps unsurprising.
Millennium Point chief executive Dr Nick Winterbotham has heard all of the criticisms many times before, but appears to have the perfect rebuttal. The £114 million building, the largest millennium project outside London, is increasingly popular and making a profit.
It is 100 per cent let and has been for four years. As well as Thinktank and the IMAX, its tenants include Birmingham City University, Birmingham Metropolitan College, Marketing Birmingham, Sustainability West Midlands and property consultants Rider Levitt Bucknall.
More than a million people enter Millennium Point each year. About 2,500 people work there.
The rest are visitors to Thinktank and IMAX – which together welcomed 400,000 people last year.
“Millennium Point is doing exactly what it was supposed to do,” says Dr Winterbotham. ‘‘And that is to inform and educate through Thinktank, to provide a major visitor attraction and to spearhead regeneration in Eastside.
Dr Winterbotham admits that progress has not been as fast as he would have liked. If Millennium Point resembled a large shed in the middle of a huge building site 10 years ago, it still does today.
The city council’s vision, that Millennium Point would be the catalyst delivering redevelopment of Eastside has only been partly realised.
The new Matthew Boulton College is in place, along with towering modern apartment blocks, and work is about to begin on the Ormiston Academy for the Performing Arts and City Park Gate, a £100 million mixed-use scheme.
But a much-publicised vertical theme park, billed as Eastside’s major tourist attraction, will not go ahead after land for the project was handed over by Advantage West Midlands to Birmingham City University.
Work will start next year on the £13 million City Park, which will drive an eight-acre green wedge between Millennium Point and Curzon Street Station.
It also seems likely that the High Speed rail link between Birmingham and London will eventually go ahead, bringing a major new station into the heart of Eastside and less than 500 yards from Millennium Point’s front door.
Dr Winterbotham insists that Millennium Point is more than delivering on the four principles laid down by the Millennium Commission:
* To provide a focus for activities aimed at developing the technological base of the region and providing a catalyst for continued regeneration in Birmingham
* To provide a major visitor attraction on science and technology themes
* To provide a central facility for the Academy of Youth/University of the First Age learning initiative
* To act as a beacon for technological development both by its design and linkages between the key elements.
Dr Winterbotham said: “The reason we are getting good numbers is because we understand where to pitch Thinktank.
“There will always be an element who say ‘oh, well, we used to go to the Science Museum and we liked that so we’re not going to go to Thinktank because it’s not the same’.
“But the new generation loves Thinktank.”
He rejects the claim that Thinktank has dumbed-down, pointing out that any museum’s prime aim is to explain often difficult concepts in a simple way, allowing visitors to go away and find out more if they wish.
The success of the IMAX cinema has clearly helped Millennium Point financially, attracting 160,000 visitors last year to watch blockbuster films such as Avatar and Alice in Wonderland. Birmingham is now the first point outside of London to stage “spectacular” films, according to Dr Winterbotham.
He expects the next year or so to be difficult as Government spending cuts strike and the public sector takes a hit. It is probable that Birmingham City Council will want to reduce the £2.6 million annual contribution it makes to Millennium Point.
Constant change and improvement is the theme going forward, with plans for £5 million to be spent on building a science garden as part of the City Park and a Made in Birmingham Gallery at Thinktank depicting centuries of industrial and scientific invention in the city.
Dr Winterbotham added: “We do not think it is going to be easy over the next year or so. But we do not want to put our admission charges up, we do not want to break faith with the public.”
At the moment, 60 per cent of Thinktank’s customers are first-time visitors, mainly children on school trips.
But this figure is expected to fall over the next few years, making it more important for the museum to give people a reason for returning.
And, in a parting shot to those who yearn for the old Birmingham Science Museum, he said: “It is all too easy to sit back and make no change, but If you are not careful you become a history museum. It is important to be at the cutting edge.”
