The former Ritz Cinema car park in Stockport town centre is to be sold off for housing. The authority's economy and regeneration scrutiny committee is recommended to back disposal of the land when it meets on Thursday night.
The Fletcher Street site is currently used as a surface-level car park but council bosses say their vision for the site is as a’ high- quality residential development in this important town centre location’. A report set to go before the scrutiny committee says it would bolster regeneration of Town Centre West, the 4,000-home ‘urban village’ driven by the borough’s Mayoral Development Corporation (MDC).
“This development supports the wider ambition of the MDC’s masterplan for Stockport to become the most sustainable, liveable town centre in Greater Manchester with schemes already on site at Weir Mill and announced at Stockport 8,” it reads.
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“It will help to deliver against ambitions for 4000 new homes and further promote investor confidence in the town centre.” The report adds that redevelopment of the site would ‘address an environmental ‘eyesore’, making ‘a visual improvement to the current derelict buildings on the adjacent site’.
Disposal of the site would generate an unspecified ‘capital receipt’ for the car park, which has raked in around £50k per year for the town hall over recent years. Since the sale was originally agreed in December 2020 a number of problems have arisen including complex technical and legal issues with the site, inflationary factors and market changes.
Papers say these - together with the challenges of the ‘post-Covid environment’ - have all impacted on the project’s viability. However, council consultants CBRE have recommended going ahead with the sale - albeit under revised terms - after considering whether it could get a better offer by repeating the procurement process.
Much of the detail is being kept confidential for reasons of commercial sensitivity. But papers reveal that the agreement includes a 250-year lease with a buy-back option enabling the council to call for a surrender of the lease if development does not begin within a reasonable timescale.
They add that details of the new housing development - including design quality and space standards - will be controlled through the planning process, while tenure types will ‘evolve’ as the scheme progresses’. The site is not considered suitable for a supported housing use due to the scale, density and location of the development.
The report will go before the council’s economy and regeneration scrutiny committee on Thursday night (June 15) before going to the cabinet for a final decision on Tuesday, June 27.
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