Snow Hill development fires starting gun on legacy ambitions

St Joseph managing director Richard Starkey

Richard Starkey had only been officially the managing director of St Joseph, the West Midlands brand of FTSE 100 housebuilder Berkeley Group which came to Birmingham last year, for a matter of weeks but legacy was already at the forefront of his thinking.

“We are here for the long term,” he said. “We want to play a key part in shaping the evolution of the city and create new benchmarks in developments, and hopefully people will see that over the long run.”

St Joseph had its plans for 400 apartments in Birmingham’s Gun Quarter approved in February. Its Snow Hill Wharf development on the site of the FGF warehouse will be in five residential blocks, with the highest tower reaching 21 storeys.

“We saw the Gun Quarter as an area with untapped potential,” said Starkey. “Because not much has happened there, we can shape much more the quality of what’s going on.

Snow Hill Wharf

“We can almost be the pioneer – I use that term very loosely – but if you are first in and that development is the right quality and design, it will encourage others to come in and develop in a similar way.

“I dare say that will be the first of a number of sites we will consider down there. It’s not just about residential but also about what spins off that to create the neighbourhood.”

One of the phrases the Berkeley Group uses is “placemaking, not just housebuilding” and Starkey is adamant this is an important building block for St Joseph too.

He said: “Some of the developments that have sprung up have focused on the investor market, which is natural, but you need to focus on the people who will live there.

“We retain our freehold. Maintaining the quality of the open space is important to us and you can only do that if you keep an interest in it.”

St Joseph’s interests are also in growing its Birmingham presence. It employs 30 people on Colmore Row – “from a standing start a year ago”, said Starkey – and has ambitions to ride the wave the city is on.

“At the moment Birmingham, relative to London, is very appealing,” he said.

“The price of property will go up in Birmingham but I think incomes will grow with it. I think for quite some time Birmingham will become quite affordable for property.

“How we make the most of that is by being a key partner for the city council. The city has its own vision – the Big City Plan sets out a lot of that.

“There are a number of neighbourhoods that we can help shape, so that the city can become a true international city.”

It is also looking across the region, and is assessing development opportunities in Solihull, Stratford-Upon-Avon and Leamington Spa.

“There will be new communities springing up and so we hope we will have a part to play”, he said.

Its approach to placemaking focuses on the people, the spaces and places, the properties, and the community plan, with the ambition of creating neighbourhoods for people to live in.

Starkey said: “We are selective about the opportunities we consider. What are the right locations with the right demographics? Where can our founding principles around placemaking have the biggest impact?

“This isn’t just about apartments, it’s about a blend of products. We are looking at housing-led schemes too.”

Which brings us back to legacy. Success will be measured, he said, on “how we are viewed by the wider market and what we leave behind in the city in terms of place and neighbourhoods.

“That wider legacy of what we are creating is important to us.”

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