Luxury housebuilder set to release first phase of £22m Old Trafford development

Chester-based luxury housing developer, Blueoak Estates is set to hand over phase one of Alexander House in Old Trafford, comprising 60 apartments, under a wider 116-unit, £22m scheme.

The former office building has been partially vacant for several years and was acquired by the property firm in April last year.

Blueoak has a pedigree in the conversion of commercial buildings into residential homes and is now focusing on Old Trafford, a location considered to be one of Manchester’s most rapidly emerging areas.

Iain MacLean, Blueoak Estates managing director, said: “Manchester is a city that is suffering from an acute shortage of quality homes.

“Developers such as ourselves need to be more agile and innovative in the solutions that we present, which is why we are seeing more and more large commercial buildings such as Alexander House transformed and repurposed in this way.

“Not only does this building benefit from being in a brilliant location with excellent transport links, but the structure and integrity of the building is excellent and so is perfect for this style of conversion.”

The scheme features 116 one- and two-bed apartments across 10 storeys and benefits from 137 parking spaces, with views towards Old Trafford cricket ground, Old Trafford football ground and Manchester city centre.

Alexander House supports the Government’s bid to tackle, ‘embodied carbon’, essentially bringing dilapidated and abandoned buildings back to life and redeveloped for modern day use.

Iain added: “From the infancy of Blueoak, we have explored ways in which we can use redundant buildings and reconfigure and redevelop them.

“Often, the fabric of the building is sound, however, the task of redeveloping can seem more challenging when dealing with the unknown, therefore, lots of developers prefer to simply knock down and rebuild.

“For us, we learned to recognise the vision and make-up of the original design and then benchmark that against modern needs and expectations. We must appreciate buildings through the decades and restore and enhance where we can. Conversion from commercial to residential makes perfect sense as the shift towards shopping online and working from home continues to gather momentum and more and more commercial buildings become available.

“We’ve met a critical milestone at Alexander House and the scheme is fully on schedule for completion later this year.”