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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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#7 ·
Andy, we've seen, read, and heard lots of things about the proposed height of the main tower, but this is the first real conformation that it will be 40 stories tall.

There are various pictures and renders of the proposal on the Greengate thread, but as far as we know, those may, or may not be the final designs?(probably not) We'll just have to wait until later this month when the revised plans are submitted and are available online.

The fact that BSC and their architects are working with SCC, CABE, and ASK on the revised Canopus proposal, will hopefully ensure that we end up with a much improved proposal.
 
#11 ·
Thanks for the article jrb. I have my doubts that BSC will start this on receiving planning permission. Bashaar Issa seems to be a master of PR but less adept at getting proposals out of the ground. Here's a bit of info that I posted in the Greengate thread back in June.....



For anyone having trouble visualising it, take a look at the Fielden Clegg Greengate masterplan. Its basic form is faithful to the masterplan. It comprises two L-shaped podium pieces with the towers arranged on the part of the podium that runs along the proposed park and terminates on the River Irwell where the tallest tower is situated.

RED - Spectrum (U/C)

BLUE - Abito (U/C)

PURPLE - "Greengate" Towers, BSC Proposal




GREENGATE MATERPLAN






VIEW OF GREENGATE FROM HARVEY NICHOLS! (New tower proposal the more feint outline).
 
#28 ·
I was under the impression that they do need planning permission for it (the hole), but they are so confident that with the right design they can get persmission for a building large enough to fill the hole, that they are starting anyway.

I wouldn't have though the council are going to sneak in overnight and fill it up again on the sly. If someone builds a house or a Tesco, without proper planning permission it seems to take a while to suss out what they are up to; or at least do something about it.

I don't think digging holes is much of a risk. Even if they had to, surley filling them in is virtually free compared to the cost of digging them.
 
#33 ·
Even if they had to, surley filling them in is virtually free compared to the cost of digging them.
Moving soil in any direction is one of the most prohibitively expensive things you can do in construction, major excavation or fill is enough to kill many a project (including alot of civil engineering and landscape). If anything the fact that they can afford these endless groundworks on multiple sites shows the amount of cash they have behind them, god knows why they done use it more (ahmm) constructively.

Wasnt the scheme for a underground car park a separate planning proposal well before any serious tower scheme? Even if the car park was in and done, I dont think it would have much bearing on the tower, other than being its basement.
 
#30 ·
I've looked about and could find anything on them applying for a planning ap on this big hole. You don't need a planning ap to dig a pond, you need one for mining or quarying but this isnt mining is it. Its a bit mud and also where that wall is it just looks like have dug down to its lowest ground level.
 
#36 ·
Ey up:

Applicant name:
Central Salford URC
Ward: Ordsall
Location: Land Bounded By The River Irwell, Cathedral Approach, Victoria Bridge Street, Chapel Street, Greengate And Gravel Lane, Salford
Proposal:

Provision of new Public Realm in the form of three new urban spaces - a water based square fronting the River Irwell, an enlarged pedestrian route along Greengate and a new city square to the north of the railway viaduct including a new pedestrian bridge across the Irwell to Victoria Street, water sculptures, new market cross, exchange monument and single storey pavilion building, tree planting and hard and soft landscaping

http://www.salford.gov.uk/living/planning/planninglist.htm
 
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