Completion for £20m Two Didsbury Point
Southway Housing Trust’s development has seen 76 homes and a medical centre delivered at the former Withington Community Hospital.
Residents are now moving into the West Didsbury development, which was designed by Buttress and built by Bridgestone Construction, with the medical centre being delivered through a partnership between Southway and Citybranch Healthcare.
Two Didsbury Point provides 30 apartments for social rent and 46 for shared ownership, all with either one or two bedrooms.
Priority for the social rent homes will be given to existing Southway tenants looking to move to a smaller home, the registered provider said, freeing up larger homes for families in need.
Southway’s thinking is that the development also supports aspiring homeowners, offering homes for people looking to get onto the property ladder through shared ownership sold by Southway’s sales and management partner Gecko Homes.
The development is described as a six-minute walk from West Didsbury centre, close to shops, local green spaces and public transport links.
At ground floor, the site also now houses the NHS’s Didsbury Medical Centre, which has moved from its old Didsbury village base into a 12,847 sq ft unit.
The centre offers services including testing, minor surgery, family planning, physiotherapy, mental health support, diabetic specialist care, and research facilities.
Jonathan Turner, Southway’s assistant director of development, said: “Two Didsbury Point is a hugely important project for us because we’ve achieved a scheme that provides 100% affordable housing with social rent in Didsbury, which is an affluent area and where house prices are high.
“We’re also proud to be working with partners to provide a new medical centre for the community to improve health services in the area.”
The scheme received £6m in grant funding, including support from Homes England and Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s Brownfield Housing Fund.
Cllr Gavin White, Manchester City Council’s executive member for housing and development, said: “Two Didsbury Point is an important development in this community that has delivered more social rent and affordable housing for local residents.
“It’s projects like this that offer real housing choice for local people. Creating more one and two-bed options in Didsbury provides opportunities for people in larger family homes to rightsize, should they want to, into smaller properties that better meet their needs. Combined with the new medical centre, this is a terrific scheme for this neighbourhood in West Didsbury.”
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Nice to see land reused. Sad to see yet another mundane Buttress development. They are littering the city with bland, ‘hall of residence’ architecture. Very dry. Please update your design palette.
By Legacy?
Very sad to see such a bland, souless, uninspiring and dull building – what a wasted opportunity. Do the Planners have no architectural standards to meet these days?
By David Stafford
Not great for people who don’t drive and used to be able to get the bus to Didsbury Medical Centre. The new centre seems to be only for motorists.
By Francis
In response to Dave Stafford: the early designs genuinely had real promise, ambition, identity, and a chance to raise the bar. But like a lot of schemes, they get hijacked and their costs go unmanaged and the project fails, this is another one of those caused by the Pied Piper of “sustainability” Instead of recalibrating early, the team pressed ahead with a overly ambitious brief. The outcome was predictable: spiralling costs, redesign after redesign, and a steady erosion of everything that once made the scheme interesting. What we’re left with now is a diluted, compromised development that barely resembles the original vision. Not because ambition is a problem, but because ambition without realism is just a very expensive way to end up with something ordinary
By Steve5839
Yayyyy!…more bland looking, over-priced shared ownership homes from Gecko Homes!!!
By Gigantic Steve