Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton is one of Britain's newest cities, allotted city status in the year 2000. Wolverhampton is serviced by the M5, M6 and M54 and along with its central location, makes the University of Wolverhampton an appealing prospect to students travelling from the UK and abroad.
Wolverhampton has a range of entertainment facilities including Molineux stadium, which is Wolverhampton’s largest entertainment venue and the Wolverhampton Civic Hall, which also incorporates Wulfrun Hall, the city’s other principal venue.
The city is steeped in history, notably Bantock House. Restored in 1999, Bantock House is set deep within Bantock Park and where exquisite Decorative Arts collections can be seen that include Enamels, Steel Jewellery and Japanned ware. Wolverhampton Art Gallery was built in 1884 and is situated in the heart of the town centre. The gallery has an collection of contemporary Pop Art, sumptuous displays of Victorian and Georgian paintings and three national awards for the way it presents art to its visitors. Bilston Craft Gallery is the largest dedicated craft venue in the region with a lively programme of exhibitions featuring the best in contemporary ceramics, glass, jewellery, textiles, metalwork and woodwork. The Gallery offers an exciting programme of exhibitions, workshops (for children and adults) and events.
Several Wolverhampton jobs are in the retail sector, with the Mander Centre creating many of these. A lot of Wolverhampton business is also carried out at the Wulfrun Shopping Centre, which underwent an £8million refurbishment in the late1990s.
Wolverhampton’s city centre is currently going through a major change via its £180million Interchange project. This new development takes place at the eastern gateway of the city of Wolverhampton and it envelopes the current and historic transport links of the railway station and canal. The Interchange will transform the City Centre which will see new bus and train stations, a new café quarter around the Broad Street Canal Basin, new shops, restaurants, a casino and four-star hotel. The developer Neptune Developments Ltd also plan to demolish the existing station car park and replace it with 1,200 car parking spaces on top of the new train station. There will also be 200,000 sq ft of new, high quality public space opened up, connecting Queen Street and the wider city centre.
New opportunities for City Centre living are provided with 75 new apartments. Homes are planned near to the magnificent Chubb Building. Wolverhampton Interchange is a sustainable development which will create nearly 2,100 new jobs, 1,100 of which will be office based.
The i54 is a 96-hectare (220 acres) high quality business park development. Planned to have its own motorway junction to the M54, the flagship scheme is expected to create around 2 million sq ft of industrial floor space, 376,000 sq ft of hotel, office, retail and leisure floor space. Wolverhampton City Council, together with its joint venture partner the Regional Development Agency Advantage West Midlands, is developing the site along with South Staffordshire District Council as the principle planning authority.
The site will provide around 6,000 jobs primarily in the technology industry by 2020 for people within Wolverhampton and the Black Country, at the gateway to the Wolverhampton Telford Technology Corridor.
