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Lapal and Worcester & Birmingham to meet again in Selly Oak
After a full five years of deliberation and planning, the partnership formed between principal participants; Birmingham City Council, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Trust and Sainsbury's, is poised to deliver their long-awaited promise to Selly Oak. This will be one of the largest regeneration and construction projects to take place in a UK city suburb in recent years. The resulting QEH is to become a fully comprehensive medical centre with all major medical specialities rationalised to one major site, while the present Battery Park retail trading site, together with the former Birmingham Battery and Metal Co. premises, will be transformed by Sainsbury's into an ultra modern retail outlet complex. The spin-off for the canal community is that the former section of the Dudley No 2 Canal, passing across the site, will also be restored as an extension arm and so the first length of the Lapel Canal project in the East, also becomes a reality. At the same time, its former junction with the W & B will be reinstated and the latter canal will recieve some sympathetic modernisation.
To get a feel for the outcome, imagine you are a first time visitor to Birmingham arriving by boat from the south. You have just passed the unmistakable Cadbury's site on your left and the canal has become unremarkable yet unqestionably urban again. But then, as the W & B straightens up to be crossed by the Bristol Road (Bridge 80), your sight of the new complex beyond heralds your certain arrival in Birmingham. There is to be an arched construction of residental flats and offices spanning high above the canal with one end joining the Sainsbury's store alongside the new junction. For the boater, this will act as a pointer down to thwwharfs that will be provided along the Lapal arm, so you may moor up for a while and do your shopping. Nowhere else in Birmingham will there be such a range of food-store shelves and counters less than 50 yards from waterside moorings! Then, assuming you seek a tranquil overnight rest before arriving in the City the next day, you might proceed further along the Lapal arm through the narrows, which will replicate the former Brewin's pump stop lock, and into Harbournes Wharf just to the west of the present Harbourne Lane Bridge. For the time being this will be the limit of navigation but, being a former wharf, it will permit the winding of boats up to about 60ft in lenght. Having strived for fifteen years in its restoration mission, the Lapal Canal Trust is delighted with these prospects. Indeed, much of its efforts of the last two years have been aimed towards this outcome. Behind the scenes there have been innumerable meetings and liasons between a large number of secondary organisations; each of which is equally keen to derive some benefit from this massive project. Once this first restoration is achieved in about 18-months time, our next aim is to extend navigation along the flank of Selly-Oak Park to its west end, and so establish a full over-night facility for the boating visitor to the BCN. Further details can be be found on the Lapal web site at ; www.lapal.org or from Jon Axe; on 0121-608-0296 Peter Best: The Lapal Canal Trust