Dudley Zoo link road work to end in February
A link road between the Black Country Living Museum and Dudley Zoo will be completed in February next year.
Work will then start on a 1,000 space joint car park for the attractions, it has been announced. The £10 million project to join up the two sites has been in the pipeline for years and a timescale for work has now been drawn up.
A new joint entrance will be built for both sites with a link road as part of moves to attract one million visitors a year.
Council bosses today revealed work on the car park will begin in April once building finishes on the link road, which will be accessed from Tipton Road.
The car park, with 100 spaces for cars and 22 for coaches, is set to be completed in summer 2014.
The road will run from near the former Trading Post premises in Castle Hill to the back of the museum in nearby Tipton Road.
Access
It will also provide access to Dudley Canal Trust at the back of the museum.
The plans became a reality when a bid for £4.5m of European funding was approved last year.
And just weeks ago £600,000 was allocated from the Black Country Local Enterprise Partnership's Growing Places fund for the car park. Up to 480 jobs are expected to be created.
Meanwhile work on the £6 million archives building between the museum and zoo in Tipton Road is due to be finished in July next year.
Regeneration chief Councillor Shaukat Ali said: "This is a significant step towards creating a thriving tourism destination here in Dudley, and will link all of our visitor attractions together."
