Building Briefs – February 20th

The interiors of a landmark new development in Glasgow will be revealed this week with the opening of a marketing suite and show apartment at Park Quadrant Residences in the city’s West End.

Developers said that Park Quadrant Residences will fuse contemporary living with classic elegance to complete Victorian architect Charles Wilson’s vision for the Park Circus area, with ceiling heights and facades throughout the development echoing those of the original concentric rings of terraces that have crowned the site since 1851.

The 11 buildings, made up of 98 apartments, duplexes and penthouses, the work of Ambassador Developments (Park Quadrant Ltd) and interiors, by John Amabile Design, are distinguished by their attention to detail and high quality finishes.

A virtual reality property tour will give buyers an opportunity to see the finished apartments come to life.

Scotland’s railway to benefit from £23m of upgrades this Easter

Network Rail engineers will work around-the-clock this Easter to deliver more than £23 million of infrastructure improvements across Scotland’s railway.

Over 2,500 staff will work around 40,000 hours on projects across the central belt, in the south west and in the north east of Scotland.

In the central belt major investments will include rebuilding Livingston South Station and continuing work on electrifying the Edinburgh-Glasgow via Shotts line.

More than a kilometre of new track will be laid on the West Coast Main Line at Carstairs and further progress will be made on a £100m signalling system renewal around the south of Glasgow.

In the south west, engineers will be laying new tracks and working on improvements to drainage systems underneath the West Coast Main Line at Lockerbie and in the north east, engineers will be altering five bridges between Aberdeen and Inverurie as they prepare to double-track the railway.

Tenants secured for Johnstone’s former shoe lace mill site

4th Developments, owners of the former Paton’s Mill site in Johnstone, has secured three new tenants, as interest increases in the regeneration of the site.

Phase 1 of Paton’s Mill Retail Park includes Aldi, Starbucks and Home Bargains who have each signed up in recent months to create a supermarket, drive thru restaurant and retail offering respectively.

Starbucks has signed a lease for a 2,300 sq. ft. drive thru restaurant located at the High Street entrance to the development, Aldi will occupy Unit A, a 17,000 sq ft. retail unit and Home Bargains will be in the second retail unit comprising 15,000 sq. ft.

Bell Building Projects Limited, the main contractor has been on site since mid-December and is working towards completion of Phase 1 of the development masterplan in Summer 2018.

Regeneration funding for projects in Sutherland

The Embo Trust, Strathnaver Museum and Sutherland Community Sports & Recreation Hub are among projects in Sutherland set to benefit from funding from the Highland LEADER Programme.

Sutherland Community Sports & Recreation Hub has been awarded LEADER funding of £31,217 towards the development of a multi-use games area in Golspie. The Sutherland Local Area Partnership has approved funding of £247,578 to date and is encouraging potential applicants to come forward for a share of the remaining funds which must be committed by early 2019.

The Embo Trust is also set to benefit from LEADER funding with an award of £30,534 to renovate the old school to create a village Community Hub with multi-purpose hall for activities and classes, community shop and outreach post office. LEADER funding will help establish a commercial café/restaurant unit within the new centre.

Also benefiting from a funding boost of £29,349 from LEADER is Strathnaver Museum.

The Museum Trust is embarking on an ambitious project to redevelop the museum as a heritage hub for north west Sutherland and LEADER funding will contribute towards the development phase.

Plans for coffee shop at Aberdeen housing development

Plans have been lodged to build a new coffee shop within an Aberdeen housing development.

Housebuilder Dandara has submitted an application to Aberdeen City Council to erect the store in the Stoneywood Estate.

The proposed coffee outlet would be situated within the residential development’s civic centre, between two retail units.

The building would be no more than one storey in height.

New Springfield showhome opens with help from Motherwell school children

Green fingered pupils at Firpark Secondary School have been using their talents to maintain the garden at the new Springfield Properties’ show home in Motherwell.

The vocational secondary school for pupils with varying additional support needs, has teamed up with the housing developer to give pupils real life working experience.

Springfield Properties opened its four-bedroom show home at its Motherwell development last month. Since then, the group have applied the horticulture skills they’ve learnt in class to maintain the garden.

The Firpark Secondary School adopts the Developing the Young Workforce curriculum which helps to prepare children for the world of work. The programme has been designed to teach students about different vocations including beauty care, photography, business management and hospitality.

Stirling Council publishes £26m draft administration budget

Investment of almost £26 million is being proposed for Stirling under a draft administration budget and capital plan published ahead of a meeting this week.

The proposals would see Striling Council investing over £1m in initiatives including a pilot project to target holiday hunger among school pupils; investing £200,000 to mitigate the impact of Universal Credit; making Stirling a Dementia-Friendly- City; enhancing cemetery maintenance and introducing 20mph zones.

A further £24m would be invested across capital projects including £4.5m for road improvements and modernisation, over £2m for City Deal projects, over £300,000 to enhance parks and play areas, £1.1m for a flood prevention scheme fund, over £5m to enhance schools and early years and £1m to improve the area’s digital connectivity.

Councillors will consider and decide the financial plan for the coming year when they meet on Thursday.

Funding gives green light for Lumphinnans community garden

Lumphinnans Tenants’ and Residents’ Association (TRA) has secured funding to begin transforming a disused garage site into a community garden thanks to a donation of land by Fife Housing Group.

Coalfields Community Futures Programme, which supports community-led regeneration within ex-mining villages by encouraging active citizenship and building local democracy, has awarded the group £3,000 towards the redevelopment of a vacant lot at the end of Ochilview.

The land itself has been donated by Fife Housing Group and housing officer, Audrey Cameron, has been involved with the TRA since its inception in February last year.

Homeownership declining among young adults, finds IFS

Young adults today are significantly less likely to be homeowners than those born just five or ten years earlier due to a 152% increase in average house prices, a report has found.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said that those born in the late 1980s had a homeownership rate of 25%, compared with 33% for those born five years earlier (in the early 1980s) and 43% for those born ten years earlier (in the late 1970s).

The falls in homeownership have been sharpest for young adults with middle incomes, it added. In 1995–96, 65% of those aged 25–34 with incomes in the middle 20% for their age owned their own home. Twenty years later, that figure was just 27%.

The IFS said the key reason for the decline is the sharp rise in house prices relative to incomes. Mean house prices were 152% higher in 2015–16 than in 1995–96 after adjusting for inflation. By contrast, the real net family incomes of those aged 25–34 grew by only 22% over the same twenty years.

As a result, the average (median) ratio between the average house price in the region where a young adult lives and their annual net family income doubled from 4 to 8, with all of the increase occurring by 2007–08.

This increase in house prices relative to family incomes fully explains the fall in homeownership for young adults, according to the report. The likelihood of a young adult owning their own home given how their income compares with house prices in their region is little changed from twenty years ago.

But in 2015–16 almost 90% of 25- to 34-year-olds faced average regional house prices of at least four times their income , compared with less than half twenty years earlier. At the same time, 38% faced a house-price-to-income ratio of over 10, compared with just 9% twenty years ago.