Eastside City Park officially opens

Eastside City Park, the first new park to be built in Birmingham city centre for more than a century, has been officially opened.

The park was officially opened on 16 March, having been partly opened to the public in December.

A green space for Eastside

The £11.75 million park covers 6.75 acres in front of Millennium Point, in the Eastside district of the city centre. It includes 14,300 square metres of landscaped green space, 310 trees, a 110-metre canal-style water feature and a public square with 21 jet fountains.

It was designed by the architects Patel Taylor with the French landscape architect Allain Provost.

The park runs from the remaining part of Park Street Gardens, past the Masshouse development and along Curzon Street, past the old Curzon Street station and Millennium Point, to the Parkside building of Birmingham City University.

A long road

The idea of a city park in Eastside has been around for years. Discussions with the government's architecture advisers began in 2004. In 2007, a bid for £25 million from the Big Lottery Fund was turned down, but the city council pledged £5 million to get the project started.

Part of a wider regeneration

The park is at the heart of the council's plans to transform Eastside, a former industrial area to the east of the city centre that was cut off for decades by the Masshouse Circus section of the inner ring road. The flyover was demolished in the early 2000s, opening up the area.

Millennium Point, which houses the Thinktank science museum, opened in 2001, and Birmingham City University is building a new city centre campus nearby. The government has also chosen Curzon Street as the site of the Birmingham terminus of the planned HS2 high-speed railway, which is expected to bring further investment to the area.

What visitors can expect

The park offers lawns, trees and paths for walking and sitting, with the fountains and water feature expected to be popular with children in the summer. It is also designed to be a venue for events and to provide a green route between the city centre and the university and museum.

A greener city centre

Birmingham has hundreds of parks across the city, but relatively little green space in the centre itself. The council hopes Eastside City Park will give city centre workers, students and residents somewhere to relax, and make the area more attractive to businesses and developers.

The opening comes at a time of major change across the city centre, with the new Library of Birmingham due to open on Centenary Square in September and work continuing on the rebuilding of New Street station.