So Salford or Manchester is not to get its beach.
Thankfully it doesn’t look like your average supermarket and is topped by a wildflower meadow roof that looks very pretty in all the pictures.
It’s getting a supermarket instead.
Back in 2004 Urban Splash launched a design competition for a scoop of land bounded by Springfield Lane and the River Irwell just off Trinity Way. This is a five minute walk from the Manchester Arena, seven from Victoria Station and ten from Harvey Nichols.
One of the designs included a beach and MEN reporter Neil Keeling was duly dispatched to have a look and pose in a deck chair with his trousers rolled up - click here. As you do on a beach.
That design, by Weston Williamson, also included 450 new apartments and won the £20,000 RIBA organised competition. Cue lots of bucket and spade headlines.
But the scheme never got started and was never likely to given the banking crisis so the area, once used for various industrial processes was tidied up and nature took over and it has become a little patch of welcome green, with, ironically a crescent of sand. (There’s an amusing, little video here)
Now a new application has gone in, this time designed by Ian Simpson Architects, for a supermarket led development.
Thankfully it doesn’t look like your average supermarket and is topped by a wildflower meadow roof that looks very pretty in all the pictures.
But its big, 28,000sqft ,and people already living on Springfield Lane are concerned about deliveries 24/7 never mind the shoppers.
The plan also includes 40 new properties, mainly three and four storey townhouses but also a block of eight apartments. The houses will front the river.
This time Urban Splash has teamed up with Salford based SiSi investments, run by developers Paul Simon and Simon Gould.
And it is understood that ASDA has already shown some interest in being the operator.
This could throw a spanner in the works of plans for a similar sized supermarket not too far away at New Broughon. The plan had been to demolish Mocha Parade and re-use the site for a bigger supermarket to serve the whole area. ASDA has been mentioned here too.
It also caused some consternation to the officers drawing up Manchester’s supermarket strategy, in a report to the executive last month.
It had to revise its description of Springfield Lane from 'recreational land' to 'brownfield site' and says: 'The study should also remove any reference to the deliverability of the site being affected by its current informal recreational use.'
The city has earmarked Central Park and First Street as the sites it wants for two new big supermarkets – ruling out Boddingtons which is just across from Springfield Lane saying that is the wrong location.
The application is likely to be heard by Salford City Council's planning committee this month.
New idea for Springfield
