Nottingham Buildings

The Construction of Nottingham Contemporary 
(Previously - Centre for Contemporary Art, Nottingham (CCAN) 

Weekday Cross
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The following notes are from my original front page for the Nottingham Contemporary. I leave them here as a record:

The building stands on the site of one of the ancient southern approaches to the original town of Nottingham, completely obliterating Garners Hill and the old Garners Hill rest garden.  It scars the view of The Lace Market from Broad Marsh, destroys the view of High Pavement from Middle Pavement imposing itself in front of The Unitarian Church and also the view in the opposite direction.  It also blocks off the old GCR / LNER rail tunnel entrance, preventing any possible future use.  Quite simply, it is totally and utterly out of context with the period area in which it stands and is another of the City Council 'pet projects' that ignore all normal planning considerations together with the needs and wishes of the local population.  It is an eyesore and if the architects believe that by imprinting a lace design onto the face of some dirty green concrete,  they have by some miracle made it blend and merge with its 19th Century surroundings, then they are both naive and deluded.  I'm sure that if told that there was £13 Million spare to be spent on culture and leisure, the Nottingham people would have preferred it spent on the restoration of Newstead Abbey and its gardens, Highfields Park and its water features, Victoria Baths, Victoria Embankment and Memorial Gardens to name but a few neglected areas needing substantial cash injections.

Finally, and I'll say no more on this subject, IF there was a desperate need for such a centre in the city, wouldn't it have been nice to see the City Council follow the lead set by The Tate Modern in London ? (In an old converted power station).  There is a building crying out for some huge investment and a new use. I refer to  T. C. Hine's listed Great Northern Railway Warehouse on the edge of the East Side Development area.  This building could have been restored on the exterior and the inside transformed into a modern exhibition space far more flexible than the confined areas of this new development.  Another opportunity lost.

You might guess that I don't like this building but I do have admiration for the feat of civil engineering that went into the ground works. As the early photographs below show, the preparation of this site was a huge task and probably cost as much as the actual building itself.

Speaking of cost, last week (W/c 29-09-08),  it was announced that the City Council now has to find another £1M to cover an overspend on the construction costs that was attributed to the very complicated ground works that I referred to above. The report also noted that a further £2M might be needed to enable the centre to open for business.  What a waste - just this overspend alone could have restored the crumbling 
West Front of Newstead Abbey, the home of the poet Lord Byron.

Just over two months on from the last announcement and last night (04-12-08)  the Nottingham Evening Post reports that the overspend has now escalated to a staggering £5.44 MILLION bring the total spend up to £19.39 M.  The Post report anticipates that the City Council will have to find another £4.25 M as its contribution to make up this over-run.   It seems to me that most projects of this nature that are funded by the tax payer (Either directly or indirectly via grants), are underestimated at the planning stages for fear of creating an even bigger uproar that might prevent work getting started.  A 39% under estimate would have been bad enough on a vital new hospital unit from which all would benefit, but on a minority interest project such as this, its a total disgrace !  Just think of what could have been done in the city with this money.

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