V Building
building in Birmingham, England
The V Building (formerly known as Arena Central Tower) was a proposed 51-storey residential skyscraper approved for construction on Broad Street on the Westside of the city centre of Birmingham, England. The tower was part of the larger Arena Central development scheme on the former ATV / Central Television Studios, closed in 1997. The entire development site covered an area of 7.6 acres (31,000 m2). On completion the development was set to include offices, shops, restaurants, cafes, leisure/entertainment, fitness centre and hotel. It was to have been built on the site of a multi-level underground car park next to Alpha Tower, one of the tallest buildings in Birmingham. The total cost of the entire scheme was expected to be £400 million and of the tower, £150 million.
The estimated completion date was initially set for 2009, but due to setbacks was extended to 2013. In 2009, the developers received a 5-year extension to planning permission; the council turned down a 10-year extension in the hope that work would begin before 2015.
The proposed scheme was cancelled during 2014 and alternative plans, which do not include a tall tower, were approved by Birmingham City Council.
Original proposal
The V Building was not part of the original plan for Arena Central which was submitted in 1998 by Miller Group.
“V Building” enters the record as building in Birmingham, England. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Building, building and Birmingham can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“V Building” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Building, building and Birmingham provides the most credible route into that argument.
Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7907717. Authority coordinates are 52.478, -1.906. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1997, 2009, 2013 and 2015.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
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Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “V Building”, its source revision and the description used here.
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- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “V Building” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.