Giant twin towers set to straddle the southern entrance to the redeveloped New Street Station are being shelved due to the collapse in the market for city centre apartments and offices.
The 30-storey towers were to be a landmark on the Birmingham skyline, standing over the 21st century station, but they will not now be built alongside the rest of the £600 million project.
With preparatory building work on the New Street Gateway revamp set to begin next month, Network Rail has asked the council planning department to delay the towers until the housing market picks up.
While the station and platforms revamp is funded by the Government the towers, along with a shopping centre replacement for the Pallasades, are to be built with private sector investment.
The towers will join a number of major city centre high rise developments, including the 50-storey Broad Street V Tower, on hold because developers are unwilling to invest until the market for city living apartments returns.
It is also feared that, if built, the towers would be a huge and highly visible white elephant, lying vacant at the entrance to the city’s new world-class transport hub.
A Network Rail spokeswoman said: “We are still committed to building these towers, but it would be difficult during the economic downturn.
“We did not want to delay the whole Gateway project. Birmingham has waited long enough for this.
“Our planning application is a practical measure which allows us to split the development into two phases, the station and shopping centre first and tower blocks later.”
The application is expected to be rubber stamped by Birmingham City Council’s planning committee on Thursday. It includes details of temporary landscape features on the sites set aside for the towers.
In a report to the committee, planning officer David Wells said: “It is of the utmost importance that the economic downturn does not impact on the viability to redevelop New Street Station to provide a world class gateway to Britain’s second largest city.”
The twin blocks were to replace the vacant Stephenson tower block which was built on New Street in the 1960s. The handful of remaining residents were last month told that a compulsory purchase order on their flats had been approved by the Government.
The Stephenson Tower Residents Association has written to the planning committee asking that, in the light of the decision to put the twin towers on hold, their block is instead refurbished.
But a report to the planning committee highlights the comments of a Government inspector who describes Stephenson Tower as “unattractive in its current form” and says that “retention of the tower would be a compromise which would detract from the overall design”.
The new concourse is expected to open to the public in 2012. Then the old concourse will be redeveloped to deliver a world class station upon completion in 2015.
It is thought the large scale construction work, a more welcoming rail station for Birmingham and business spin-offs will create 11,000 jobs for the city.
