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One Islington Plaza | Islington/Moss Street | 317 Student Flats/Retail | 8-10 Storeys

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#1 ·
Downing looks to kick-start Islington regeneration with £70m plan



Downing will submit plans for the first three phases of a seven-phase plan to create a mix of student and key worker accommodation and retail space

Liverpool property developer Downing is to revive a plan to regenerate the Islington area of the city in an initial investment worth £70m.

In the next few months Downing will submit plans for the first three phases of a seven-phase plan to create a mix of student and key worker accommodation and retail space on the 10-acre site.

The project is part of an expansion by the company which will see it undertake development worth £500m across the UK in 2014.

The Islington scheme will complement the £400m plan to rebuild the Royal Liverpool University Hospital nearby.

The site stretches from the back of the TJ Hughes store in London Road across to Islington, which is a key route into the city centre.

The plans, originally conceived in 2005, were shelved in 2007, when it became difficult to raise finance for the scheme due to worsening credit conditions.

Now Downing is aiming to start building work in 2014.

In an interview with the Liverpool Post, the firm’s founder, George Downing, said: “We have paid down our bank debt at Islington and put the company in a stronger position with no debt.

“We have two local architects who are drawing up schemes which will be mixed-use. The schemes will be student-led.”

The site, which stretches from Moss Street to Norton Street has been in dire need of a facelift for some years.

For businesses already trading in the Islington area, the lack of regeneration was accompanied by worsening economic conditions..

Mr Downing is now confident he can secure funding once the plans are approved.

He added: “Over the last few years it has been hard to plan regeneration and spend money but we now have got our head around what we want to do.

“We will start putting planning applications in in the next few months.

“We have a bit of traction now and we think we can get something going.

“There have been little pockets of regeneration on Islington and all these things help.

“But what we are talking about is a bigger scale and will add gravitas to the area. With scale comes better public realm.

“The more of that you have the better the development is.

“Once we have planning permission we generally find that one of the banks we work with will be forthcoming with the finance.

“We have very strong relationships with them.”

Liverpool City Council’s cabinet member for regeneration, Cllr Malcolm Kennedy, said he couldn’t comment specifically on the plans until they were submitted by Downing.

However, he added that Islington was a key area of the city identified as being in need of regeneration.

Cllr Kennedy said: “We await details of this plan with interest.”

This week Downing also revealed plans to spend £2m on a revamp of its No1 Old Hall Street office building in Liverpool’s business district.

Mr Downing said the property was the latest in its office portfolio to receive an upgrade.

Earlier this year the firm launched its Flexi-Office product, offering small firms “easy in, easy out” terms.

Mr Downing has also hit out at the “grants culture” in Liverpool which has seen state support give to office projects such as St Paul’s Square and 20 Chapel Street.

He claims older buildings like Downing’s Port of Liverpool Building or Merseyside Pension Fund’s Cunard Building were having to compete against subsidised office space.
 
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#110 ·
As far as I can see, the only real criticism you can make of this development is the use of those disgusting magenta panels, which have never looked any good on any building, clothing or interior design. Magenta on grey is ugly - a suggestion of the terminally colour-blind. Other than that minor detail, this looks a great development.
 
#108 ·
Councillors need to ask why huge swathes of central and inner Liverpool are windswept, barren wastelands, devoid of people and businesses.

I fully support anyone challenging poor developments, I'd like to quality buildings that interface with the streets and districts they sit it but this questioning of everything that isn't in some pastiche Edwardian or Victorian style is infuriating. One of Liverpools biggest problems is the politicians in situ who seem hell bent on keeping people poor in poor conditions for them to feed off.
 
#116 ·
Aside form the panels which add a bit of colour, it's not dissimilar to the Apex building, which has avoided mass criticism thus far. Perhaps people just don't like the young, intelligent folk who're going to be living here?
 
#119 ·
Well, why does this get the 'dated' criticism, and Apex not? If anything, this looks more modern in many respects to Apex 2. Larger glazed areas, expanding town over no-mans-land surface car parks, good quality cladding (judging from the renders), and it'll add more life to town after 5pm than the labs ever will.

If it housed regular flats and not student digs, would it be considered half as ugly?
 
#121 ·
Making judgments on the design or materials of a building is not the same as being against development. I think, sometimes, that we can get so desperate for development that any criticism of a project is rejected out of hand. I'm sure that suggestions and improvements could be made, and the project still go ahead? In fact, after the debacle on Bridgewater Place - you would hope that from now on that the planning department would be more careful and more rigorous in imposing conditions?

Personally, I have no objections to developing Islington at all: it is a good place for student accommodation for obvious reasons of closeness to campus and hospital etc. But as Ste says, why produce a night-time render if not to disguise shoddy or second rate paneling? Hopefully we'll be proved wrong.
 
#125 ·
Night renders serve no useful purpose other than for marketing materials. They are all but useless for planning and give the impression that you are trying to hide some aspect of the building that would otherwise be visible during the day.

Having said that this development looks okay and has some nice features like the glazed corner. It's also another development of impressive scale coming forward in Liverpool.
 
#138 ·
Not holding my breath as Downing are notoriously plodding operators.
If they're aiming to have any of these ready for the September 2017 intake, they really need to get a move on. These are sizable blocks, and the sites are not even clear. 18 months is already tight, wait any longer and it'll be a real struggle to get them done in time.

We really need these to drop concurrently, not consecutively.
Indeed. Imagine how great that would look to see all these blocks rising along Islington at the same time. Throw in the ex-National Express site development, which in theory should overlap construction phases, and what a welcome that would be to visitors arriving in the city.
 
#139 ·
I was coming down Islington earlier, and the pavement near the junction with Norton Street is covered in loads of various white, orange, and turquoise markings. I've seen such markings in other places before, but I've never seen this many - they're everywhere.

The yellow marks show the pavement where the markings are. They are a few towards the junction, but fewer in number -
https://flic.kr/p/HRqEzM
Original image from Google Maps. Copyright to Google. Shown here for informational purposes only.

Something about to happen...?
 
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