How much is … converting warehouses?

With their internal brickwork and timber balconies, the apartments at Liverpool's Preston Point would fit into any modern, refurbished warehouse development in a city centre. What's unusual about them is the price.

Homes like this are not usually within the grasp of first-time buyers. Major renovation projects are costly and unpredictable, and housing associations building shared-ownership developments can be reluctant to take them on, even though most are keen to see such space turned into homes rather than wasted as empty brownfield sites.

Maritime Housing Association, though, has the numbers to show that making the city centre affordable can stack up.

Maritime managing director Bill Lacey says: "Projects like Preston Point are complicated and we have to get a number of people with different skills together to pull them off, but we believe it's important. Too many city centres are blighted with run-down buildings that housing organisations think are too difficult to deal with."

Preston Point is a prime example of this. The RSL and architect ShedKM had to overcome severe structural and site problems to bring the scheme to fruition, but were highly commended in the Building for Life design awards for their efforts.

A complicated proposition
Preston Point took two years to develop, from acquiring the land to completion in September 2001. Damp had taken a severe toll during the 30 or so years the two fruit storage warehouses had been empty, and drainage and dehumidifying work continued until late into the project's development.

One half of the building was brick-vaulted and still fairly sturdy when Maritime started work but, in the other, the wooden flooring had rotted and had to be replaced throughout.

Two spiral staircases also had to be ripped out and replaced, while vaulted ceilings and metal-arched windows had to stay, adding further costs to the project.

But the biggest barrier at Preston Point was access. The site was open only on one side, with no space elsewhere around the building for entry. To make the project stack up financially, Maritime had to put three apartments on each of the four floors, so it negotiated with developer Urban Splash, which was working on the site next door, to leave an 8 m pedestrianised strip to the side. It was from this obstacle that the most eye-catching aspect of the building originated: its slatted balconies.

"It works like a Venetian blind," says architect Hazel Rounding of ShedKM. "It lets light in but not views, so we don't constrain Urban Splash in terms of overlooking." The balconies also added much-needed floor space to the small apartments, as did thinning the walls, originally 500 mm thick.

Looks good from every angle
In total, the development cost £1m. It was funded by rent from commercial space on the ground floor and more than £800,000 from shared-ownership sales of 14 apartments, including two penthouses created on a new roof.

"It was a tight budget," says Rounding, who agrees that refurbishment projects are problematic and hard to stack up for shared ownership. "But our attitude is that rather than dilute all the parts, we just go big on some. For example, the balcony space is very important to small apartments. Inside, they're pretty simple; the partitions are just plasterboard, but we went for a decent specification on the kitchens and bathrooms."

Maritime's success goes to show that warehouse living need not be the preserve of those who can afford designer flats. Housing associations wanting to create diverse, sustainable neighbourhoods should look again at the many forbidding derelicts scattered through the inner cities: with a bit of innovative working and design, glossy city-centre developments can look as good on the balance sheet as the photos do in the annual report.