Bolton can be ‘the poster child for regional devolution’
Greater Manchester’s largest town is chomping at the bit to emulate recent placemaking successes seen in places like Stockport, delegates at a conference heard last week.
Clear Futures and Bolton Council invited the region’s property community to the recently completed Wellsprings innovation centre to run through some of the projects shaping the town’s future, share stories of successful collaboration, and reaffirm that Bolton is very much open for business.
Scroll down for a gallery of images from the event
Jon Dyson, director of place at Bolton Council, kicked the event off by setting out the town’s direction of travel.
“Like many towns and cities across the UK, Bolton’s local economy is adapting to meet new challenges,” he said.
“Our emerging 10-year economic growth and resilience plan identifies how we can build on existing sector strengths and capitalize on new opportunities…and create the ideal mix of new homes, quality retail, leisure, hospitality, and employment space.”
Bolton Council, Dyson said, is open to investment and new ideas and is actively seeking out growth
“We are hoping to build confidence in the sector and to attract more inward investment,” he said.
Jon Dyson said Bolton is open for business. Credit: PNW
A clear future for Bolton
Charlotte Cordingley is the chief executive of Clear Futures, which acts as a conduit between local authorities and the private sector across the country, fostering relationships that drive regeneration.
Clear Futures has been active in Bolton since 2019 and Cordingley and Dyson have worked closely together to push forward the council’s £1bn growth programme and helped the authority secure £100m of external funding.
“We specialize in delivering sustainable solutions for the built environment, bringing expertise, generating efficiency, and creating value,” Cordingley said.
“Everything that we deliver is really focused on the heart of our communities, how we want to really maximize everything that we’re delivering.”
That delivery is about to be turbocharged, Cordingley said. Plans for a Mayoral Development Corporation, similar to the one set up to drive the £1bn regeneration of Stockport’s town centre west, could put the rocket boosters under Bolton’s efforts to rejuvenate the town centre.
“We’ve seen what that’s delivered in Stockport in terms of the galvanizing power, bringing industry together, bringing cross-sector partners together and we really look forward to supporting Bolton on that journey.
“Over the next one or two years, Bolton is the place to watch in Greater Manchester.”
Clear Futures’ Charlotte Cordingley explained how the company can help local councils like Bolton. Credit: PNW
The right plan
Louise Fountain, associate director at AECOM, said Bolton’s approach to reinvention will engender buy-in from the local community because it seeks to preserve and showcase the town’s identity.
“I’ve worked across various town centres and cities and I think what Bolton has achieved really aligns with how I would approach those projects,” she said.
“What is most important is that we are delivering places for people to live and work, and that distinctive identity is key for that.”
She added: “It is great to see that Bolton is getting the right people in the room to actually discuss what makes Bolton distinctive, what makes it special, and why is it different from, say, Wigan or Salford.”
One way Bolton can retain and enhance a sense of distinctiveness is by retrofitting some of its existing assets.
Bolton Market has recently been revamped while the Wellsprings office building, where the conference was held, has been transformed into a hub for start-ups.
Oxford Innovation, which has more than 30 similar sites across the country, is behind the scheme.
Nick Brushett, centre manager at the Wellsprings, said the aim of Oxford Innovation’s Bolton scheme is to nurture and grow local businesses as it has done elsewhere.
“In Portsmouth, we had an organization called In Space Mission, who put satellites on rockets,” he said. “From 2018 to 2021 they went from a three-man organization to 30 and BAE Systems purchased [the business] for just over £13m.
“That’s our ambition, is to find very similar organizations in Bolton and to help them grow, help them flourish. Everything is here for businesses to thrive and grow.”
Bolton has a plan to drive growth but is it the right one? Credit: PNW
Town centre living
One of the most crucial ingredients in Bolton’s regeneration cocktail is town centre living. Bringing a critical mass of people into the town will support existing businesses and encourage new ones, injecting life into the streets throughout the day.
Placefirst’s 167-home Deansgate Gardens and Step Places 208-home Moor Lane are just two examples of projects currently on site.
Capital&Centric is also active in the town, with plans to deliver 160 homes off Bradshawgate and Breightmet Street – a scheme known as Trinity Quarter.
Harry Dhaliwal, founder of Step Places, said he had been encouraged by the reaction to his firm’s scheme.
“We’ve had a good response to the sales and we have established some decent values, showing that people do want to have home ownership within Bolton town centre,” he said.
“This has created a new marketplace, [which is] obviously a big positive.”
Capital&Centric has been in discussions with the council about rolling out its brand of residential in Bolton for more than five years. As well as the Trinity Quarter, the developer is leading on the redevelopment of Farnworth, another of the borough’s district centres.
Like Dhaliwal, Scott Mallinson, development director at Capital&Centric, has been buoyed by how Bolton stacks up on an appraisal.
“I’ve remodelled Farnworth a couple of times now from an appraisal point of view and those rents grow each time,” he said.
“At one point in time we were looking to sell the asset, but now we can see the longevity and the investment that Bolton [Council] is giving that give us the ability to hold it.”
Placefirst is nearing completion of the first phase of Deansgate Gardens, proof that Bolton’s vision for a living-led town centre is more than just a strategy, according to Phil Jones, development director at Placefirst
“Although there is a vision from the council for the next five or 10 years, I think it is happening right now and that’s really interesting to see,” Jones said.
“What the council should keep doing is the coordination between all of us [developers active in the town].
“This isn’t the first time that Harry and I have met or Scott and I have met. We meet regularly at developer lunches and developer coordination meetings that [the council] runs to make sure that we are all in lockstep.”
Developers active in Bolton gathered to share their experiences. Credit: PNW
Crompton Place
Among the planned new homes, at the heart of the council’s vision, is Crompton Place, a long-awaited mixed-use regeneration scheme slap bang in the middle of the town centre.
The plan for this project is to provide an asset that will serve the thousands of new residents the council and its partners are hoping to attract into Bolton.
Adam White, senior director at CBRE, which is advising the council on the Crompton Place project, said that, if the next few years go as planned, the town could become “the poster child for regional devolution”.
“[Bolton can be] the exemplar on the national stage for how you bring the public sector and the private sector together to achieve truly sustainable, long-lasting town centre brownfield regeneration,” he said.
“That is not an easy thing to do. Let’s just take it to that next level. Let’s supercharge it. I think the touch paper is ready to be lit.”
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- Bolton has a plan to drive growth but is it the right one? Credit: PNW
It’s really great to see Bolton council making all the right noises. In the past Bolton council has been Bolton’s greatest enemy. Allowing houses to be built on two former railway lines into the town effectively meaning Metrolink will never reach the town; allowing Bolton FC to move from the town centre to the middle of nowhere; and allowing no end of depressing retail parks which sucked life out of the town centre. It’s a town made up of absolutely terrible decisions, so I’m glad to see the council have a progressive strategy for town centre improvement. Now we need to see these depressing retail parks shut down and converted into much-needed homes and redeveloped into dense, mixed-use areas. And much, much more resi in the town centre.
By Anonymous
It’s very important in terms of redevelopment of the town centre that Bolton gets away from just trying to copy the mix of other towns and city.It needs to develop its own unique identity by having more independent restaurants and café and non chain stores.And it also needs to turn much of the unused upper floors of town centre retail into apartment.Finally in the long term it needs to have a plan to bring back the Wanderers to a locattion near the town centre and bulldoze the Middlebrook shopping zone which is undermining the town centre success for the last 25 years.
By Fred Smith
As a Boltonian i’m pleased to hear positive plans moving forward with the town centre. There’s been way too many missed opportunities so hopefully this time we can see real progress!! We can’t live in the past, large retail inst going to come back. But with the right mixed use buildings, apartments and small independent retail it can become an attractive, cheaper alternative to Manchester City Centre.
By MJ
This is very encouraging news. Although it would be nice for those shops which are now at Middlebrook to be relocated back into a revamped town centre I doubt that is likely to happen. I think the retail footprint of the town centre needs to be reduced and consolidated and the focus should be on attracting independent shops, bars and restaurants, along with more housing. I’m sure if they are successful then larger chains may follow but there is an opportunity to bring lasting benefits to the town and it’s people. The council need to be aggressively marketing Bolton as a viable alternative but the services and amenities must be there to support this.
By Anonymous