Bury to kickstart town centre resi with disposals
Watson Construction is set to be confirmed as the council’s preferred bidder to take forward development at Pyramid Park and the space above the underground Q-Park facility, delivering around 200 homes in total.
Bury Council’s cabinet will this evening be asked to approve the plan for disposal, okaying officers to carry out the necessary legal procedures to complete deals, and move the projects towards delivery phase.
Bury launched its plan to find a delivery partner through Find a Tender in April, seeking a partner that can deliver around 138 homes on Pyramid Park, and 77 apartments on Q-Park.
Situated on the edge of the town centre, Pyramid Park and Q-Park have both long been identified as strategic regeneration opportunity sites. Both are council-owned. The sites are close together, divided by the Metrolink line to Manchester.
Late in 2023, Bury secured £1.73m from the government’s Brownfield Land Release Fund to push Pyramid Park on, enabling a remediation programme currently being carried out by Conlon Construction – the timelines attached to this grant were disposal to a developer by March 2027, and completion of new homes two years after that.
Pyramid Park is especially important as it links into the plans to give Bury’s transport interchange an £80m makeover, with a new footbridge included in a scheme due to start next year.
The Q-Park opportunity is a 74-acre brownfield site opposite Bury Town Hall on Knowsley Street. It sits above the three-storey underground car park, which was completed in 2009. That scheme was designed to accommodate up to six storeys of development above the slab level.
While the council is Q-Park’s landlord, that lease was initially granted by Ask Townside, the JV development vehicle, and there are two other occupational leases affecting parts of the site, with the NHS and Six Towns Housing. Bury is committed to facilitating dialogue so all obligations and rights are accommodate or renegotiated, officers said.
Other projects Salford-headquartered Watson is working on include Bolton’s Church Wharf and the redevelopment of The Park site in Manchester’s Northern Moor.
Officers summed up that “Watson proposed a high standard of design and public realm, with improved connectivity provided through the site and across to Bury Interchange, ultimately fostering a new, mixed intergenerational town centre community at both the Pyramid Park and Q-Park sites.”
Bury’s cabinet will discuss the matter this evening.
