West Gorton housing scheme gets go-ahead
Kellen Homes has been granted planning consent to redevelop the 13-acre Olympic Freight depot on Bennett Street in Manchester into 272 homes.
The developer, owned by Renaker founder Daren Whitaker, lodged plans for the West Gorton scheme last year following the withdrawal of an earlier and larger scheme drawn up by Sheffield-based Ascena Developments.
Ascena had reached an agreement with the landowners to build 337 homes on the site. The company lodged plans for the scheme but Manchester City Council did not determine them.
Kellen’s proposals for the site, drawn up by its in-house design team, feature 172 houses and 100 apartments.
The development has a gross development value of £80m, according to a viability report by Northern Land Agency.
The site will require “significant remediation”, impacting the scheme’s viability, the report states. As a result, no affordable housing is proposed.
Deloitte Real Estate is the planning consultant for the project.
To learn more, search for reference number 134504/FO/2022 on Manchester CIty Council’s planning portal.
Elsewhere, Kellen recently won approval for a 168-home project on Seaford Road in Salford. Like at Bennett Street, the developer aims to build a mix of houses and apartments at the former British Vita Site near Peel Park.
The elevations are pretty bland but good to see brownfield development of a reasonable density within easy cycling distance of the city centre and near Hyde Road buses.
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The energy statement says all heating will be by gas boilers; new fossil fuel heating should not be acceptable in this day and age.
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All access is from Bennett Street. A bit more permeability for pedestrians and cycles would be nice. Surely the developer could negotiate for a pedestrian and cycle entrance via the car park immediately north of the site? That would shorten the walk into town from 45 to 30 minutes and avoid making residents share with traffic on Hyde Road.
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If I were designing the landscape I would try my best to squeeze more trees between the apartments and the railway mainline to the south, to help block the noise – and incorporating anti-vibration rubber bearings in the apartment building foundations would be really good value for money, otherwise prospective residents will feel every single passing train through the floors.
By W
Can’t wait to see this one come forward. More like this please.
By Norman
This is exactly what the area has been waiting for. Great to see a Community Centre within walking distance.
By D
Agree that access to the North would be a big improvement, but the area behind the old Great Universal Stores building seems to big a secure area, so maybe not possible.
The access from Bennett Street onto Hyde Road is already difficult and accident prone, the development should provide for traffic light control of the junction, or some other arrangement, perhaps buying out the car wash on the corner there.
Hopefully all the houses will be oriented to maximise yield from built in solar panels, this ought to be a mandatory presumption on all new developments where practicable.
By Jim
i am interested
By maria