City centre news – 6 December, 2010

City centre news: December 6:

• Balfour wins stalled £45m Snowhill scheme Ι
  Construction Enquirer
  Construction will start next year on the latest stage of client RT Group Development’s city-centre scheme after Balfour saw off competition from Bam, Sir Robert McAlpine and John Sisk.The 14-floor office building will comprise 310,867 sq ft of space and is expected to be completed in late 2012. The tower is the second stage of the four-phase development which stalled on site nearly two years ago following funding problems.
• Work underway at Birmingham’s £25 million “fame academy”
  Birmingham Post
  The Birmingham Ormiston Academy (BOA), next to Millennium Point in the city centre, will nurture future stars of the stage and screen when it welcomes its first crop of students in September 2011. Modelled on the famous BRIT school in London, which launched the careers of pop stars such as Leona Lewis, Kate Nash and Amy Winehouse, the academy will specialise in digital media and the creative and performing arts.
• Connaught Square plans approved
  Insider Media
  Planning consultant CSJ Brooke Smith has secured renewed planning consent for the Connaught Square development. The Birmingham-based company has won approval for mixed-use plans on the two-hectacre derelict block on High Street in Digbeth. The property is located between the Irish Club and the newly rebuilt Digbeth Coach Station. It previously had consent for redevelopment for a mix of retail, office, residential and commercial space.
• Workers Exposed To Asbestos At Aston University
  UK Construction News
  A Birmingham-based university has been fined, along with a security systems firm, after two workers were exposed to dangerous asbestos fibres while fitting CCTV cameras.
• Revealed: The private hire cabbies risking their jobs for just £5 in Birmingham city centre
  Birmingham Mail
  Plain-clothes police officers went out on to city centre streets to try to catch private hire drivers breaking the law by taking advantage of unwitting punters desperate to get home after a night out.