Ashton Discount Warehouse to become flats

Tameside Council has approved £4m plans to change the former home furnishing store into 33 apartments, with five retail units put in place on the building’s ground floor.

The plans, submitted by Hestia Town Planning on behalf of client Stamford Living, also call for the building of a series of extensions towards the rear of the site to enable this transformation.

The old Ashton Discount Warehouse building sits at 147-155 Stamford Street Central in Ashton-under-Lyne. The building, which was used as a shop and a storage facility by the retailer, has been unoccupied since the business closed in August last year.

Approved designs by James Campbell Associates comprise 29 one-bedroom apartments, and four two-bedroom ones. There would be provision for 33 cycle spaces but, due to the project’s location in the town centre, there are no car parking spaces planned.

Also absent from the proposals is an affordable housing provision. A viability study by CPV found that the scheme would not be viable if it included anything other than market properties.

That same viability study placed the gross development costs for the project at £4.4m, with construction costs estimated to be £2.5m.

Most of the external changes will focus on the rear of the site, which faces Fleet Street. This would leave the Stamford Street Central frontage largely unchanged.

Tameside Council approved the application from Stamford Living, whose directors include Mordechai Blum and Benei Rosengarten, at the planning committee meeting on 31 May. You can learn more about the application by searching reference number 22/01046/FUL on Tameside Council’s planning portal.