The soapworks is at the end of Ordsall Lane, near Exchange Quay, one of the early 80’s office schemes just outside the Quays. This building is the old Colgate Palmolive factory. Many people were distraught when they heard it was going to close because of the number of jobs that would be lost. When the property was put on the market there was quite lot developer interest and two developers who were competing against each other joined forces, formed a joint venture company with Nikal and Abstract and funded by the Carlyle Group, who funded Piccadilly Place in Manchester.
Irwell River Park is 8 kilometres long stretching from MediaCityUK and Salford Quays in the west through to the heart of the City Centre, and the Greengate scheme next to Manchester Cathedral, then loops back round to the University of Salford and The Meadows. It is a natural linkage and now people can walk along it, cycle along it, row along it, and even fish in it. We see it as a way to bring the communities together, whether you are living, working or playing in that area.
The URC took the lead; Salford City Council is the accountable body. There are no legal agreements, it is just about a partnership working, working with the funders who managed to secure funding to work up the designs, working with all the 20 to 30 developers along this stretch, although some have changed hands recently and we are keeping track of ownership to ensure we talk to the right people. We are working with the regulators, the environment agency and the Manchester Ship Canal Company/Peel. It is essential to work with the local communities and businesses. When we did the interview session with the Lottery the locals were there and emphasising how important the funding was to them. And we are really trying to see how we can make this work. Now we have secured £42 million. There is a lot happening around the Quays and MediaCityUK with a bridge link across and the promenade in front of the Imperial War Museum North. We are still considering how we improve the walkway and make it different so we have not given up yet on some future application, but getting back to being realistic, we are focussing on what can we deliver in the next 2 years, although we still have those future aspirations.
Their scheme went to Planning Panel at Salford in May 2010 and it was recommended for approval, the refurbishment of the building and the new development around it. The developers could have just looked at their own demise but no they wanted to work with us to look at how can we open this up to the Metro link stop and the water to use the waterfront as an asset, and more importantly, how can we create lateral links from the riverside walkway. All this has been done by negotiation and the developers will look at contributing to the wider objectives through a Section 106 agreement and with us putting in match funding.
This is Chapel Wharf, heading further in to the city centre, and shows The Lowry Hotel a 5 star Rocco Forte hotel, which came along after a lot of the public realm and infrastructure was put in pre-URC days. This site here is that scrubby bit of land, used for car parking. At the height of the market the owner put it to the market to see how much money he could make. This produced an inappropriate scheme of very high-rise residential that would have completely obliterated the view of the bridge and put the adjoining sunny area in shadow. We wondered what to do to stop this. The owner was the Guardian Media Group and after a great deal of negotiations with them, we offered to buy the site.
After working closely with Salford City Council and a nearby landowner, Bruntwood who own Riverside, we decided it would be even better to buy the site jointly with Bruntwood who had already thoroughly bought into the vision of Irwell River Park as Chris Oglesby, their Chief Executive, is on the Irwell River Park Strategic Steering Group. This would to enable us to open up this walkway, which at the moment does not exist, improve the public realm, and potentially bring forward new development and enhance their Riverside scheme. After lots of further negotiations we formed a joint
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