page_title: Big City Plan
section_title: Snowhill
hierarchical_section_title: Big City Plan / City Centre Core / Snowhill
caption_attribution_description: English: This is a view of the second phase of the Snowhill project in Birmingham. This is an office block, still under construction, viewed from the Snow Hill station side of the site.
context_page_description: The Big City Plan is a major development plan for the city centre of Birmingham, England.
  Stage 2 of the Big City Plan, the City Centre Masterplan was launched on 29 September 2010. This masterplan sets out how the city centre of Birmingham will be improved over the next 20 years. The plan identifies five key areas of development potentially worth £10 billion.
  The aim of this ambitious plan will be to increase the size of the city core by 25%, improving transport connectivity throughout the seven ‘quarters’ that make up the city centre. It identifies how the city centre population will grow providing more than 5000 new homes and 50,000 new jobs, as well as the £600 million redevelopment of New Street station, opened in September 2015, a new Library of Birmingham which opened in September 2013 and Eastside City Park which was opened in 2012, the first new city centre park since Victorian times. It also sets out visionary proposals in which each of the seven 'quarters' will be able to evolve.
context_section_description: The Snowhill scheme adjacent to Snow Hill station is a large mixed-use development. Developed by Ballymore, it will feature two office blocks, a hotel tower and a 137-metre residential tower.
  One Snowhill was the first building in the development. The accountancy firm KPMG has 118,400 square feet (11,000 m²) of office space in the building on a 20-year lease on floors 7 to 11.  Following this, Barclays agreed to move its Midlands headquarters to One Snowhill. They are to take up 98,000 square feet (9,104 m²) of space on floors three to six on a 15-year lease with its own dedicated reception and meeting suite. 1,000 sales and operations staff will move into the office building. The pre-let to Barclays is believed to be the reason why they were comfortable to refinance the loan for the construction of the building. Snowhill One was completed in 2009.
  Construction of Two Snowhill was suspended in 2009, with the basement level and slip form cores having been completed. The project restarted in 2011 with the shell and core works being completed in early 2013. Office floors 1 to 6 have been completed to 'Cat A' standard and are now available for lease. Floors 7 to 14 are currently being fitted out for legal firm, Wragge & Co who have signed up for 250,000 square feet (23,000 m²) of space, a new record for the Birmingham office market.
  In a major move which will give Birmingham its first five-star hotel, Ballymore confirmed that US operator Starwood Hotels & Resorts has entered into an agreement to open a new 198 bedroom Westin Hotel & Spa. However, building has stopped due to the financial backer pulling out.
  As part of the development, St Chads Circus was levelled with the underpasses filled in. A new square created adjacent to Saint Chad's Cathedral, with the aim of attracting more pedestrians to the area.
caption: One Snowhill.
exif: {"Image Make": "NIKON CORPORATION", "Image Model": "NIKON D70", "Image Orientation": "0", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Picasa 3.0", "Image DateTime": "2008:08:06 11:40:05", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "210", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "990", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4946", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/250", "EXIF FNumber": "24/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2008:08:06 11:40:05", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2008:08:06 11:40:05", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "37/10", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF LightSource": "Fine weather", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "31", "EXIF SubSecTime": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "00", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "2240", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1488", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "866", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CVAPattern": "[0, 2, 0, 2, 2, 1, 1, 0]", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "46", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Portrait", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Soft", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "c45a73fc84673a0057a40b1da7ed0884"}