Today’s new housing has to be mixed tenure, with private and affordable homes looking the same on the outside. That’s easy to achieve compared with the challenges behind the scenes.
Page Road, Bedfont, London — Catalyst Housing Group
Project
Page Road is a long-term phased project sited not far from Heathrow Airport involving the demolition of 1950s affordable apartments and their replacement with similar mixed-tenure homes. In all, 311 homes are being developed: 89 homes for market sale, 81 homes for shared ownership and the remainder for rent. Catalyst Communities Housing Association is carrying out the project with partners PRP Project Services, contractor Inspace Partnerships, architect Pollard Thomas Edwards and engineer Campbell Reith. The phased scheme is due to be completed in 2011, for a build cost of £32.5m.
The brief
The Page Road estate's redevelopment is a gradual process. The original estate was owned by Hounslow council, but managed by its arm’s-length management organisation, Hounslow Homes. As homes on the estate are rebuilt and tenants move into new homes, they become tenants of Catalyst Communities HA with preserved right to buy. The housing needs of existing residents have therefore influenced the scheme design, resulting in a third of the homes being family houses and one apartment block being set aside for older residents.
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Catalyst originally bid to redevelop the estate seven years ago jointly with a private housebuilder, with the latter intending to develop the market sale homes. At the time, the 130 rented homes were to be funded by cross-subsidy from the private sale homes. But a year into the process, the private sector partner pulled out and Catalyst opted to develop all tenures across the site.
The housing association set up a subsidiary company called Page Road Development. Julie Vickers, head of regeneration at Catalyst, says:
“It was an opportunity for the group to obtain experience in the development and marketing of open market sale units. In doing so, we hoped to create cross-subsidy to fund affordable rented homes in the future.” The scheme has an element of cross-subsidy from the market sale homes, but also has £4.28m social housing grant for the shared ownership element.
Decanting tenants at Page Road was unusually complex. The project team was committed to only carrying out one decant of tenants, the completion of each phase being intended to provide the decant for the next and allowing the transfer of land from council to housing association. The scheme design, with its crescent terraces, made that hard to achieve and as Philip Murphy, director of PRP Project Services, explains, space was tight: “There were only two small sites where it was possible to build without demolishing first.”
Catalyst and Inspace Partnerships reconfigured and re-phased the scheme to ease delivery. They reduced the planned five construction phases to four, cutting six months off the programme time, and were helped by some tenants consenting to decant twice.
There was another complication to the site’s redevelopment, as Murphy says: “Pollard Thomas Edwards’ masterplan is skilful in increasing unit numbers on the site and providing houses, but the compromise was that we had to move the roads.” Moving the roads means diverting services, but at the same time essential supply lines to existing residents had to be maintained.
For Murphy, a key lesson of the project came from this services work: “It is essential to efficiently plan work on roads and sewers. Since the privatisation of the utility supply companies, knowledge has been dispersed and it can be difficult to track things.”
Irrespective of the complications, the project remains on time and on budget and, crucially for such a long-running project, resident goodwill is being maintained. Resident contact is via a full-time project liaison officer and Catalyst runs community development initiatives ranging from arts projects through to training and employment through its own Train2Work programme.
Homes of the same tenure are grouped across the site, a solution chosen by the tenants and council. Catalyst will not begin selling open market homes until next year, but it has sold two phases of shared ownership homes. The first 30 units were initially limited to keyworkers buying a 50% share, but because of slow take-up, the keyworker restriction was lifted and the minimum share reduced to 25%. Sales duly improved. The second phase of eight two-bed flats for shared ownership sale to local people, is half sold with prices from £194,000.
What is worth repeating
Catalyst aims to repeat innovations including the resident liaison officer, the community development work and the champions group, made up of directors of Catalyst and the council, to look at strategic issues and problems. E
One point worth making
"You can’t think like a builder. You have to have political skills. "
Tim Carpenter, Inspace Partnerships
Chelsea bridge wharf, Chelsea, London — Berkeley homes
Project
Berkeley Homes’ Chelsea Bridge Wharf stands alongside Battersea’s famous power station, overlooking the park. While development proposals for the power station have come and gone, Chelsea Bridge Wharf has progressed apace and is now in its fifth and final phase:, about 300,000ft2 of residential and commercial space. In all, the project comprises just over 1,000 apartments, both for market sale and shared ownership, a 216-room hotel, 160,000ft2 of office space, a leisure club, restaurant and retail space. Berkeley is working with housing associations Threshold Key Homes and Genesis Housing Group. Other partners on the project include architect Scott Brownrigg, services consultant Wallace Whittle and landscape architect Edco. Construction started on site in early 2001 and is set for completion in 2009.
The brief
The scheme was conceived at the turn of the millennium when some developers were still creating gated residential enclaves. Berkeley wanted its scheme to be open to all. Berkeley Homes Central London managing director Paul Vallone recalls: “We wanted to create a range of accommodation and uses that were complementary and we wanted the environment to be permeable and encourage vibrancy.”
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The scheme sits in the London borough of Wandsworth, noted for its relaxed approach to social housing provision. It has no social housing for rent, but a proportion of shared ownership homes, initially set at 25%, but now running at about 28%.
Threshold Key Homes bought 242 homes on the site for shared ownership sale, 91 for keyworkers, 65 for general shared ownership (both on shares of from 25%) and 86 for an unrestricted market at 90% share. All the homes sold well, with full market prices starting at £163,000 for a studio apartment, although Threshold earned some bad press late last year for selling the tranche of near market homes to well-paid urban professionals.
Shared ownership homes are not pepperpotted throughout the development, but are set apart. Vallone points out that the affordable homes equal their market sale counterparts in design quality. Shared-ownership housing is only part of a mix that includes commercial space. Two-thirds of the office space is in separate buildings on the site, but the rest is directly under apartments. How do homebuyers and office tenants feel about sharing a building? “It has not had an adverse impact on either party,” responds Vallone, perhaps because the developer has done its homework in designing for the different uses, for example, providing separate access routes.
The challenges of the scheme have come from its duration. Vallone explains: “We have a site with a seven-year window in national and regional planning policy, then we have to take on board evolving environmental issues. The needs of the people in the accommodation also change over time. The market moves so quickly. We have to have a design solution that is adaptable. We spend a huge amount of time on design and specification.” Vallone estimates that Berkeley has so far produced six very different internal specifications for its homes over the course of development. It has also researched the functionality of the apartments, including tackling that bugbear of new homes, storage.
The specification is not only evolving for the apartments. Berkeley is looking at its office spec and wants its next phase to score a Breeam “excellent” environmental rating, with buildings incorporating such features as comfort cooling on the inside and brises-soleil on the outside. Market sale apartments already have individual comfort cooling units.
The site’s buildings are constructed from concrete frame with brightly coloured cladding. The scheme’s kerb appeal, however, comes as much from its landscaping as its architecture. The developer has invested heavily in creating landscaped courtyards. It has also provided effective but unobtrusive security, incorporating natural policing measures such as overlooking of the courtyards.
The scheme also has 18 staff looking after security, concierge duties and gardening, with estate management handled by a managing agent and residents association, the latter representing both market buyers and shared owners. Good estate management is central to the success of Chelsea Bridge Wharf’s diverse community, says Vallone: “It is a key issue that must be resolved on day one. You have to get it right.”
What is worth repeating
Berkeley wants the high levels of landscaping quality and apartment functionality to be repeated in future projects.
One point worth making
"Some buyers said they’d rather buy a flat with a view facing the courtyard than facing Battersea Park. That surprised us."
Paul Vallone, Berkeley Homes Central London
Clevedon park, Liverpool — Gleeson regeneration
Project
Clevedon Park is one of the early projects to emerge from the Liverpool housing market renewal pathfinder, and is the first to be delivered by Gleeson in its City Centre South area. Under the pathfinder agreement, Gleeson has first refusal on developing pathfinder sites within City Centre South, which could have a build programme of 2,500 homes over more than a decade. Clevedon Park is almost complete and comprises 107 homes, ranging from apartments to four-bedroom houses. Of the 107 homes, 62 are for CDS Housing Association and the rest are for market sale. Working with Gleeson are housing market renewal pathfinder NewHeartlands, Liverpool council, Triangle Architects, cost monitor Stephen Davies Associates, structural engineer Structura and civil engineering and remediation specialist Sutcliffe Projects.
The brief
Housing market renewal pathfinders are tasked with turning around ailing housing markets by providing a choice of good-quality homes, with the expectation that this will generate demand to live in an area and revive the market. Pauline Davis, managing director of NewHeartlands, says: “We’re piloting development of a kind that hasn’t happened in these kind of areas.” There is therefore an emphasis on design quality and homes must achieve a “very good” EcoHomes rating and use modern methods of construction.
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Clevedon Park’s location in the city centre and close to a park could make it a prime site in some cities. But as NewHeartlands managing director Pauline Davis explains, the site is also a challenge: “Like all inner city neighbourhoods, it has high levels of crime and antisocial behaviour.” The pathfinders are committed to delivering the government’s Respect agenda and NewHeartlands is working with agencies such as the police to try to deliver social change.
The new homes at Clevedon Park were mainly planned for occupation by residents to be rehoused from the Welsh Streets, rows of Victorian terraced homes set for demolition.
The development was planned to allow the community to be kept together. As demolition neared, conservationist protesters fought the loss of the Welsh Streets, but the furore has not held back renewal or the moving of the community. All but two of Clevedon Park’s homes are now occupied by Welsh Streets residents.
Another aspect of Liverpool’s history has, however, caused problems, as Brian Gowthorpe, senior development manager with Gleeson, explains: “The project was delayed by very significant problems with the ground conditions, including stone vaults two metres below existing ground level, and by remediation. There have been several waves of development on these sites.”
The new housing is fundamentally terraced, albeit very different to the Welsh Streets. Now residents have gardens, a traditional enough feature for many houses, but radical compared with the Welsh Streets where children had to play in the streets. Gowthorpe describes Clevedon Park’s architecture as “contemporary, but without being aggressively modern”, although behind the traditional brick exteriors there is Space 4 timber framing. As Gleeson could be building similar homes for some time into the future in Liverpool, it is looking at lessons from the project. Gowthorpe says: “We think there are too many changes of materials in the elevations of the housing and we won’t be using cedar cladding. With dirty city rain on it, it looks very stained. It is not an accident that brick is used so extensively in UK housing.”
The project team has carried out lengthy consultation with local residents, but not everyone was won over to its plans. That is inevitable, says NewHeartlands’ Davis. “We’re dealing with knocking down people’s homes and there is a small percentage of residents who don’t want that to happen. But the majority of residents did say that this was what they wanted.”
And what of their reaction to their new homes? Davis reels off a string of anecdotes that indicate that the kind of home features that many of us take for granted are impressing newly housed residents. There is the resident who described his home as being like a hotel, another who was delighted at having a cupboard under the stairs and the many who are busily stocking their gardens. Davis adds: “Up to very recently we were saying to residents, this is what will happen. Now we are saying that it can happen and we can show the quality of homes we are providing.”
What is worth repeating
Gleeson aims to continue using a number of the products it specified on the project, including Space 4 and Vaillant condensing boilers.
One point worth making
"It may not seem a hard-nosed development lesson, but from a pathfinder perspective it is important to let people know what is happening, and to celebrate the successes when people move into their homes."
Pauline Davis, NewHeartlands
Source
RegenerateLive
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