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One Greengate | 88m | 21 & 31 fl

524K views 2K replies 267 participants last post by  Jamm01 
#1 ·
Bashar Issa has confirmed two towers, one 40 stories and the other 25 stories will be built on a section of the Greengate site. The rest of the proposal will include a seven-storey hotel and an eight-storey residential podium.

The full article is below.

After years of largely behind-the-scenes work on planning, young property entrepreneur Bashar Issa will next month submit his detailed planning application for the Canopus scheme in Salford.

The project knits into Ask Developments’ Exchange Greengate and features towers up to 40 storeys tall. So confident is Issa of planning consent that contractors are already on site.

‘We’re 10 metres underground already,’ he says. Canopus was originally conceived around a 62-storey skyscraper, but Issa had to settle for 40 floors in the face of objections from the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment.

‘I don’t know why, but CABE just felt it was not really the best place for a tower of that size,’ says Issa. His £200m scheme was revised and is set for planning approval in late October. Canopus will sit next to the five-star Lowry Hotel, a short walk from Deansgate, Spinningfields and Manchester Cathedral.

Issa’s firm, BSC, which stands for British Standard Consultancy, will transform land bounded by New Bridge Street, the River Irwell and Greengate with a family of buildings around Greengate Square.

A seven-storey hotel, eight-storey residential podium and towers of 25 and 40 storeys will contain more than 400 homes – including 150 apartment-hotel units – 220 hotel rooms, 300 car parking spaces, and 30,000 sq ft (2,787 sq m) of offices and retail, with the balance towards retail.

A further 700 car parking spaces on 2.5 acres (1 ha) of Salford City Council’s land will be replaced elsewhere if plans to turn it into landscaped gardens are also approved.

‘We are structuring a deal with the council to relocate surface car parking on their land to put parking in new buildings and use the land for open landscaping, both hard and soft,’ explains Issa.

Urban landscape

All the Canopus buildings will be on 1.25 acres (0.5 ha) acquired from investor Oakglade Properties 12 months ago. BSC’s involvement in the site began five years ago with an option to acquire the land from Oakglade subject to outline planning consent.

Planning permission was granted in 2000 and renewed in 2004. It is no wonder Issa is keen to get started.

‘We have been on site for three months and as soon as we get planning we will build it out in one,’ he says.

Issa has already made a splash with plans for the residential Sarah Tower in Piccadilly. Both Sarah Tower and Canopus are named after his wife, Canopus being the name of the second brightest star in the sky and translating into Arabic as Souhail, his wife’s maiden name.

It is no doubt that family is important to Issa, 28, whose father and uncle built up various commercial interests, chiefly steel mills in China. Previous property ventures by the family include hotels in the south of France and Middle East.

Issa, who lives in Manchester, sees his own emerging portfolio as quite distinct from that of his family. As well as UK schemes he is currently pursuing a series of acquisitions in the US, starting in August with the Statler Towers in Buffalo, New York State.

Back in Manchester, his emerging portfolio of residential schemes includes projects in Ancoats and the Northern Quarter. Give it a couple of more years and the name Canopus will need no introduction – and nor will Issa.


For further information on the proposal and renders, please see the Greengate thread.

PS. Yes, I know there is a Greengate thread already, but the Canopus proposal deserves it's own thread. The planning application will be available to view shortly (October) and construction will commence straightaway once planning permission is hopefully approved. So this thread will be needed sooner rather than later.
 
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#813 ·
Baz has dune a runner and is finished in Manchester and the UK.

MEN online.

Gresham pulls out of deal
David Thame
19/ 8/2008

LONDON based Gresham Finance says it has withdrawn from plans to syndicate a £120m deal which could have refinanced property developer Bashar Issa's ambitious developments in Salford and Manchester.

Mr Issa is said to have been last in touch with friends in the UK early this month and is understood to be in Jordan, where he has family connections.

Peter Riley, director at Gresham Finance, which had been considering proposals to syndicate funding for Mr Issa's developments, said: "We have withdrawn entirely from the transaction. Our agents had been trying to contact him for several weeks without success."

Earlier this month it emerged that two companies in Mr Issa's BSC Group had been placed in administration.

Issa Developments, which had been responsible for Sarah Tower at Dale Street, and BS Developments, which was behind the unfinished Sarah Point development at Great Ancoats Street, have joined BS Construction in the hands of administrator David Costley-Wood at the Manchester office of KPMG.

BS Construction was responsible for the Canopus Greengate development on the Salford-Manchester border near Victoria Station.

Two towers - one of 31 storeys, the other of 47 - had been planned.

Sources at KPMG said they were `not aware' of any issues concerning Mr Issa's whereabouts.

It is understood that Mr Issa has not been to Buffalo in the USA, where he has been promoting a £50m redevelopment of the city's Stadler Tower skyscraper, since 2007. Difficulties obtaining a United States visa have been cited as a reason for not visiting the development.

Mr Issa halted renovations there in early April, claiming cash-flow problems.

He continues to face the risk of prosecution in the UK following a death on one of his Manchester building sites last year. A police-led investigation of the fatal accident to Jan Topolski at Sarah Tower on August 1, 2007, is ongoing.

The Health & Safety Executive has said that no decision has been made on whether a prosecution for manslaughter or health and safety offences will follow.

In the United States Mr Issa is required to make a series of payments following a labour dispute.
 
#814 ·
can we use this picture on skyscrapernews please andy :)



i want to do a piece on him having done a runner and speculating with all the things his "empire" can be used for.

He continues to face the risk of prosecution in the UK following a death on one of his Manchester building sites last year. A police-led investigation of the fatal accident to Jan Topolski at Sarah Tower on August 1, 2007, is ongoing.

The Health & Safety Executive has said that no decision has been made on whether a prosecution for manslaughter or health and safety offences will follow.
sources have told me they are looking at prosecuting him. what's incredible is they LET him leave the country. passport control should have flagged him up and he should have been detained as you would expect for a potential suspect.
 
#817 ·
Now's the time to buy. BSC's gone bust, land values have plummeted and the receiver needs to get some money back as 'little' or as much as they can.

Hopefully a property developer with vision and money will buy the site, hold tight for a couple of years and press ahead with the approved plans.
 
#819 ·
I know this is stating the obvious but i have now had confirmation from within Salford City Council that this is not scheme in its present form is never going to happen.
The rest of the Greengate scheme by ASK though is unaffected apparently and still on course.
 
#822 ·
although it seem the firm is still trading. I hope they survive.

Arca, which specialised in residential work, was forced to declare insolvency in June and then restructure with the loss of six staff after developer BS Construction, a major client, went into administration. The loss scuppered its £180 million Greengate towers scheme in Salford and forced the directors to relaunch the business using their own finances.
 
#824 ·
Is it at all likely that in two or three years the plans will get bought/taken over by another more professional company and be taken forward once the credit crisis wares off? Or is it more likely that the site will go right back to the drawing board and push everything back ANOTHER 2 or 3 years of planning?
 
#842 ·
So, what's happening to this site then? All will be revealed tomorrow when I attend Pinnacle Development's Planning Meeting at the Premier Inn Greengate.

Bit of history - on June 17th, L@tic posted in the main Greengate thread;

I've had a leaflet through the letterbox this morning talking about what was the Canopus site, advertising a Public Consultation for:
'A New Residential Scheme, consisting of approximately 490 one, two and three bedroom apartments'.

The one-pager says this is in advance of any planning submissions and is signed of by 'OMI Architects on behalf of Pinnacle Developments'.

There is a drop in session at the Premier Inn on 27th June, 3:00pm to 7:30pm
Other than a map of the site it doesn't give any more info, but hopefully it's a sign the car park won't be there for much longer!
490 apartments? Well, that's quite big? On a site this small? It's going to be tall! (I'm a poet and I didn't know it!)


All will be revealed tomorrow - don't get too excited! Plenty of pictures and notes from me hopefully.



^^

For how much longer?
 
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