Clarion picked to deliver 400 Gorton homes
Manchester City Council has selected the housing association’s development arm Latimer to progress plans to transform 17 sites in the district centre into accommodation for single people and families.
Clarion Housing Association, which has just started building the 60% affordable, 500-home Brewery Gardens on Manchester’s Great Ducie Street, will invest around £60m in Gorton over the coming years to deliver the 400 homes.
Clarion and the city council plan to enter into a 10-year collaborative partnership to bring the homes forward. The issue will be discussed at a meeting of the authority’s executive this week.
Subject to conditions being met around land assembly, viability, and planning, Clarion will draw down the council-owned sites on a long leasehold basis.
The first phase of the development will be focused on the 1.23-acre former library site off Garratt Way, where Clarion plans to deliver a six-storey building featuring 70 apartments and houses on affordable tenures.
A Clarion spokesperson said: “Clarion has a long and proud history in the Gorton area of Manchester, where our founder William Sutton built one of his first estates.
“This year is our 125th year anniversary, a timely moment for us to both reflect and look forward. As the preferred partner for the regeneration of Gorton district centre, this represents a significant investment from us to deliver the new social and affordable homes that are so desperately needed in the city.
“We look forward to further supporting with their aspirations to deliver not just new housing, but new investment into the wider community”.
As well as responding to housing need in the area, the scheme “creates density in the new heart of the district centre, acting as a statement of intent in a highly sustainable location with amenities on the doorstep”, according to an executive report.
The regeneration of Gorton was mapped out in a framework drawn up by OPEN and Cushman & Wakefield that was rubber-stamped in 2023. Work is already underway. the city council as invested £1.4m to create a new public square on part of the Gorton Market car park.
