MOCHA Parade, the grim row of grit faced shops at Lower Broughton, is to be demolished to make way for new family housing.
They are going to replicate much of it at Higher Broughton where huge areas of streets lie fallow post Pathfinder. And while it will undoubtedly work I hope they find a way to mix it up and inject a different character. You can have too much of a good thing.
It was always due to bite the dust as part of the wider regeneration of the whole area but has been brought forward in the schedule by Countryside Properties.
It’s a reaction to the market where there is continued resistance, from the money lenders anyway, to lots of apartments which had been planned as the next phase.
Peter Vella, Countryside’s sales and marketing director, said: “We are leap-frogging the apartment site which will just remain open and going straight onto Mocha Parade or as we prefer to call it Phase 6.”
Phase 6 will consist of 120 houses, aimed at both families and city dwellers who want a bit more space and their own front door. All will be for open market sale with no housing association rental stock.
Vella said: “We will be bringing on new house types with en-suite bathrooms and the build-outs at the back of the living space which people like. It’s on the edge of the city centre, half a mile from Deansgate, so we don’t want to make it a suburban development but we do think people are ready for this.”
He mentioned an Ashwell house type, a three bed/two bath design of 952sqft currently being built at a Countryside scheme at Norris Green with a price tag of £147,000.
The trick at Mocha Parade, sorry Phase 6, will be the parking.
The planning has had to factor in that this is a flood plain, hence why the new school and the paths around it are raised giving the kiddies a means of escape should the River Irwell burst its banks.
The suggestion here is that the parking goes under the houses within the perimeter of each plot. The bonus of which is that it would become a swimming pool if the worst were to happen. No detailed plans yet so it will be interesting to see how they solve the problem.
The first phases of New Broughton have tree-lined parking compounds at the rear meaning the streets are not littered with vehicles and there’s added security. But these big gated spaces are costly to create and maintain and an added expense for homeowners which is why they are trying to design them out.
But it is this high level of maintenance which makes New Broughton work as well as it does. A lack of caretaking and management blights many a building and while it may be intensive and costly the work maintains standards and it would be a shame to lose that on-going upkeep.
And as the regeneration continues its progress down Great Clowes Street towards Manchester you can’t help thinking that it would have been better for Salford to have spent some of the Chapel Street landscaping pot on widening the footpaths along here so walking into the city was a more pleasant experience.
Not sure of the timescale for phase 6 but when it happens they will move the sales office from Broughton Lane down to a corner opposite the park and create a mini site showing what this area will look like.
In the meantime they are concentrating on building 31 new properties on the former electrical engineering firm site next to the shops after it finally re-located. There will be 15, two bedroom apartments (the first two-beds since the high rise Vibe) and three and four bed houses.
It also means that at some point soon the existing show homes will be sold off, indeed the four bed has already gone, which always gives the potential for a fixtures and fittings deal.
Phase 6 will also see some commercial development.
I seem to recall that the original plans had aspirations for a giant supermarket but this has thankfully gone (presumably it is now going round the corner on Urban Splash’s Springfield Lane site) and the talk now is of community shops and district facilities.
Vella said: “Rather than have one big store with a big car park that can often turn its back to an area we are more interested in providing community style facilities and complementary businesses.
“We have been talking to people like Aldi they are being very proactive and take a very different approach to development.
“What we have done up the road at The Vibe is give local firms lots of inducements to come in and get established and it is working.
“We have a hairdresser and a dentist as well as the convenience store and cafe and have two more operations coming in soon.”
I like New Broughton, I like the brick and the render, the costly landscaping and the house types, and the fact that the specification is so high.
They are going to replicate much of it at Higher Broughton where huge areas of streets lie fallow post Pathfinder. And while it will undoubtedly work I hope they find a way to mix it up and inject a different character. You can have too much of a good thing.
You can get more information on New Broughton here although I think it needs updating as its only showing two properties available, a three bed Thame and a one bed apartment and no info on the current phase. You could always e-mail newbroughton@cpplc.com.
