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Green Quarter's Wasted Opportunity
Jill Burdett thinks the city (and the country) needs to act now over empty flats
IT’S enough to make every Manchester agent weep.
A city centre apartment block standing empty and forlorn while tenants scrap over places to live and rents march upwards.
If the city wants to keep attracting young talent it has to help provide decent places for them to live.
Cypress Place was the last block built in the vast Green Quarter but the developer, Crosby Lend Lease, shut up shop in Manchester before completing the fit-out.
Across town the second block of another Lend Lease scheme, Potato Wharf, is just a concrete skeleton shrouded in clever wrapping.
But Cypress is frustratingly close to completion. All it needs is for bathrooms and kitchens to be installed and Manchester would get 215 new homes.
if you stand on the terrace at the back of the Park Inn on Cheetham Hill Road as I did you can see boxes of kit already stored in there.
Staff at the hotel reported some activity on the site recently and they would be delighted to see both the apartments and the gardens completed as it would improve the view from the hotel’s swimming pool.
![Green_Quarter_3[1]](/i/HRZ/4B04_H.jpg "Green_Quarter_3[1]")
But Lend Lease, an Australian based company, is a little busy building the Olympic Village right now and when questioned about Green Quarter a London based spokesperson said there were no imminent plans.
Leaving a couple of hundred homes standing empty is a scandalous state of affairs in a city where there is a lack of accommodation, especially affordable accommodation.
A quick check shows only 49 properties available under £600 a month and the lower end is pretty squalid.
The difficulty Lend Lease face is that the odds of finding 200plus individual Buy-to-Let investors with the necessary finance or a single institution to buy the apartments are pretty slim.
But in hard times you have to be inventive and instead of leaving it empty surely it makes sense for a housing association to buy the block and let out the apartments.
It’s already been done before.
When Countryside faced a lack of buyers for The Vibe apartment block down the road at New Broughton they did a £7m deal to sell 100 units to Didsbury-based Great Places Housing Group which then offered them at affordable rents to working people.
It was the perfect solution, giving all incomes access to good new housing and allowing New Broughton to keep growing.
Manchester needs to do the same.
If the city wants to keep attracting young talent it has to help provide decent places for them to live.
Green Quarter is on the doorstep of NOMA which will bring thousands of new workers into the city and close to the retail core for shopworkers who would love to live here but cannot afford £750 a month in rent.
Time for Manchester to try and get its hands on some of the £400m announced by the Government last week for affordable homes and get this tower lived in.
![Green_Quarter[1]](/i/HRZ/4AZS_H.jpg "Green_Quarter[1]")
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11 comments so far, continue the conversation, write a comment.
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Future slums
Nice idea Jill, I thought the very same thing when I lived in the Green Quarter a few years ago.
A few issues though... do you think any housing association has the millions of pounds needed to buy out an empty block?
Do you think Lend Lease would be willing to sell at what would have to be a below-market value?
Are the local facilities in place that social tenants would need? Think families, older people.
And I think you might find the biggest question is whether the size of the flats is up to spec required for social housing...
Apparently, someone can afford to just sit on it rather than rent it out.
Has this someone perhaps borrowed against its perceived value which is far more valueable than utilising the flats for their intended purpose?
Bill 'em for full council tax I say, let or unlet. Make it hurt!
Er.. no - they can't be let cos they're not finished. This is hardly the fault of the owners, whether or not they're BTLers.
Rephrase: apparently someone can afford to just sit on it rather than finish it.
Perhaps the reason for not finishing it is because then, they would have to pay Council Tax?
Are you sure about that? I didn't think places were council taxed unless the were occupied?
Here comes the Greek property tax equivalent...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15509705
They won't finish them if no one will buy em
The Green Quarter is a wasted opportunity. Soulless and very average architecture (thanks for that, Planners).
Lend Lease did a similar thing in Bradford. Demolished half the stores in the city then buggered off to spend their money on the Olympic Village...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadway,_Bradford
Selling to a HA is not the solution. They did this over at Sportcity and within months the block was filthy, noisy and impossible to let yo private tenants, even in the 100% private block next door. It does need finishing and i'm sure it'll be costing them a fair amount to keep secure, tax paid and squatter free.
JS3 is 100% right. I lived at Sport City from 2006 -2008 and when they moved in HA in 2008 it turned into a filthy, noisy, drug ridden, slum.
Which is the private block - The Waterfront? Is it the Cube blocks that are HA? I am an estate agent and noticed that both the Cube blocks are dirty, noisy and filled with undesirables (to put it politely)
On the Council Tax front...
(puts on lawyer cap)
...each Council will differ in its approach / criteria for deciding whether a property is completed (i.e. ready for occupation and therefore chargeable) but all Councils are required by law to service notice on a property that it feels is either completed or can reasonably be expected to be completed within three months. The property is then liable for Council Tax either (1) as of the date of the notice (in the case of properties already completed) or (2) the date that the Council expects the property to be completed within the next three months (in all other cases).
On that basis, if it's only bathrooms and kitchens to be fitted, and it can be reasonably argued that would take less than 3 months, the Council can serve notice to charge as of that date subject to appeals blah blah...
(takes off lawyer cap)
Off to the moose bar.
What a lovely little income stream that would be, ey councillors?
off to bed.
Nice income stream for lawyers you mean?
You'll also find a few public blog boards for residents of the green quarter who aren't the most pleased with how their apartment living is working out due to the management of their Block.
Leaseholders can't take the Management on and improve the performance of their agent or change agent until all the flats are sold. A difficult and complex Right To Manage process can be taken but it is exhausting for those fronting and driving it. I would like to see what more MCC can do to force agents operating in their City to get leaseholders appointed to the Management Co Boards so they drive the property management of the block. Serious issues for the newer builds.
I think this is a really good idea. Having so many flats sitting empty is ridiculous.
I've been saying the same thing for months. They should have done it ages ago. Someone definately needs to do something. Every agent is scrapping over what little apartments do come available.
There are all these empty flats but the council, instead of allowing the building of social housing, is continuing with giving land to private developers to build more 'homes-to-buy'. It is not just the developers at fault her, but the councils and especially Richard Leese, as leader.
Classic MEN style rant here. The council did not own the land these were built on.
Thankfully they're going to start work soon. Hoping to complete the fitting by this year end according to the circular they have sent. Also the the sales suite will also go active I think.Its such a good location for various reasons and should be used ..hopefully those plans of having a corner shop like establishment in the development also goes ahead