The landmark, community-funded skateable space, Tram Line Spot, opened on Saturday 17th Dec.
TLS is a purpose-built, community-designed ‘skate spot’ that can be used whatever the weather, one of the first of its kind in Europe.
Rather than a ‘skatepark’, it has been designed to blend into and complement the wider public realm around Sussex Street and to be welcoming to other user groups, including quad and inline-skaters, street artists and young people studying at the College or visiting the Nottingham Contemporary.
The area is filled with several modular pieces of skateable street furniture, designed and built with Betongpark, a specialist firm responsible for recent skateboarding installations at Somerset House and The Strand, in London.
The City Council and Skate Nottingham worked with a wide range of local and international experts to develop plans for the space as part of the wider Sussex Street development in front of the new Nottingham College building.
This has undergone a complete makeover through Transforming Cities-funded improvements to streets around the new Broad Marsh car park, bus station and Central Library building.
It has been turned from a piece of scrubland beneath the tram viaduct and an unwelcoming pedestrian route into a pleasant space with plenty of plants and grass, paved areas, large tables and seating and amphitheatre steps.
These will lead up to Collin Street which will become a new public space alongside the former shopping centre site with its exciting vision for redevelopment.
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