AROUND 1,000 new homes look set to be built at a derelict site in north Glasgow in a £270 million project.
The news comes after Glasgow City Council, which owns the 30-hectare site in Cowlairs, backed plans and will now form a partnership with the Scottish National Investment Bank (SNIB) and Aviva Capital Partners to spark the regeneration.
A mix of new homes will be built on the site between Saracen Street and Keppochhill Road. The council said that housing quality will be central to the plan, with it including a ‘significant’ proportion of family housing – including terraces and other higher-density, low-rise designs across social, affordable, private, and build-to-rent tenures.
Having been derelict for three decades, the local authority said that the site is ‘complex’ and ‘challenging’ – with it including historic mine workings, a disused mineshaft, topographical issues, and ‘significant’ infrastructure requirements. Regeneration specialist Place Capital Group has provided feasibility and design support for the project.
The council said that the investment partnership would be a ‘first-in-class model’ for housing-led regeneration in Scotland, but with it also having a proven track record elsewhere in the UK.
Success in Glasgow could lead to other brownfield land within the city being utilised for new homes, which would tackle the current issues in housing supply and alleviate pressure on homelessness services, it continued.
With the council retaining a measure of control over the long-term stewardship of the site, it said it is expected that around one third of the development be social and affordable homes.
Glasgow City Council leader, Susan Aitken, said “This is a welcome decision that will lead to one of the most exciting developments I’ve seen over my nine years as Council leader.
“Firstly, 1,000 much-needed family homes of all tenures during a housing emergency is more evidence of Glasgow’s reputation as a city that builds where other prevaricate.
“But the ambition to create a whole new walkable neighbourhood adjoining one of Glasgow’s most famous thoroughfares in Saracen St, with a commitment to quality, design-led higher-density family housing will create a new standard for modern urban design in Scotland.
“And while it may seem like dry accounting fact, the creation of this Investment Partnership with SNIB and Aviva opens up a whole new world of possibilities for housing-led regeneration in our city, and we are already in discussions with other similar patient capital funders around other large brownfield sites across Glasgow.”
Cowlairs is one of five major regeneration zones across north Glasgow, alongside Sighthill, Dundashill, Hamiltonhill, and Possilpark, which together are expected to deliver more than 5,500 new homes in a part of the city that has an abundance of post-industrial land along the Forth & Clyde canal, but where some of the city’s most stubborn pockets of inequality remain.
