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Urban Splash plans to 'reinvent the house'
Bloxham looking to revolutionise the new build model
URBAN Splash is close to revealing plans for a 'new kind of housing,' according to founder Tom Bloxham.
It could put the first batch of its reinvented new-build homes on a one-acre site next to its recently launched Longlands scheme in Stalybridge (pictured above).
"I'm as excited by this project as I am was 20 years ago when I decided to to do loft apartments in city centres. Nobody really believed it would work."
The firm has planning for two more apartment blocks but may look to build housing there instead.
Bloxham told Confidential: "Chimney Pot Park was a very interesting reinvention of what the traditional house was like, but what we want to do is to try and reinvent what the new-build house looks like."
"I'm as excited by this project as I am was 20 years ago when I decided to to do loft apartments in city centres. Nobody really believed it would work.
"During the next 12 months, we'll be showing our ideas on how we can reinvent the idea of a modern house."
Bloxham said Longlands had attracted a good mix of renters and buyers, with government initiatives such as the Firstbuy and Homebuy schemes proving invaluable. Bloxham said these intiatives were often too short-lived, however, and developers were looking forward to the government's proposed Mortgage indemnity scheme.
"If there's going to be any criticism, it's that schemes tend to be for relatively short periods of time and stop-start," he said. "It would be better to have longer periods which are more consistent."
Only eleven properties remain unsold in the scheme's second phase, Patten House.
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Whilst we are all having a big Urban Splash love in - is there any chance of doing a story about how they plan to demolish the listed former Linotype factory in Altrincham and how they wriggled out of some of their affordable housing and Section 106 commitments?
"Longlands scheme in Stalybridge (pictured above)."
No it isn't :-)
Or how they are demolishing the Dispensary in Manchester :-(
As I understand it Urban Splash and Greater Manchester Buildings Preservation Trust are working on a scheme to save this building........lets hope they manage it.
John- idea (as I have read) is that the Buildings Preservation Trust would buy the dispensary for a nominal sum and keep it as is till market improves and a possibly another developer is found.
The issue is the scaffolding that keeps it up and the couple of grand it costs per month. Urban Splash no longer want to pay, Building Trust don't have the cash to hand to do this for an extended period, public money that funded much of the rest of New Islington has dried up. So still in the balance.... unless anyone has some spare scaffolding in the back garden shed?
"reinvent the house"? C'mon Bloxham you're schtick is wearing thin after the debacle of the Ancoats Dispensary, and the miserable rate of progress at New Islington. Apart from a willingness to commission a decent architect or two, what actually sets Urban Splash apart from volume house builders like Taylor Wimpey or a Barrett?
Would it be too far to suggest brand-Urban Splash has become toxic in Manchester in recent years? Urban Splash need to prove they're more than mere cultivators of public sector grants and lucked-out opportunists to regain some credibility.
Time to reinvent the terraced house in the same way that the inner-city tower block has been reinvented?.... Cheap as chips indeed!
menmedia.co.uk/…/1485790_residents-at-20m-urban-splash-chips-development-in-new-islington-left-without-heat-and-water-after-eco-boiler-fails…