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PRESS RELEASE Green Route to Create Play Safe Streets
A green route that improves street safety and gives pedestrians and cyclists priority over vehicles is being created in a housing development in Ardwick. Grove Village Limited is transforming the inner city estate of Plymouth Grove into a thriving mixed tenure urban village, minutes away from Manchester city centre, through an intensive programme of refurbishment, regeneration and new build properties for sale. Part of the re-design is the creation of a new, tree-lined avenue called the green route, complete with landscaping and traffic calming, which encourages people to use the street for recreation and play. The green route forms an attractive and safe east-west central spine through the development for pedestrians, cyclists and cars. Starting at Plymouth Grove West the green route wends its way to Devonshire Street and resumes on the other side to Lauderdale Crescent. All residential streets to the north or south will be traffic calmed and benefit from appropriate hard and soft landscaping. The green route will give local families more opportunity to interact with neighbours by providing more public space and play areas. Alterations to the parking layout, the planting of trees, increased lighting and recreational areas will encourage safer driving. It will also provide safe, well-lit parking spaces close to people’s homes. Local residents have been involved in designing the green route which is now beginning to take shape and is due for completion in April 2007. Dave Tomlinson, Chairman of the Grove Village Residents’ Association, who’s newly refurbished home fronts the green route, said: “The green route is an excellent idea and once complete will create a really nice thoroughfare. I can’t believe what a difference it is making and it’s not even finished yet. I look forward to enjoying some leisurely strolls.” Integral to the re-design has been an emphasis on well-lit open space which contributes to a safer environment and replaces the warren of alleyways and dead ends previously in place, before the development got underway. The green route has been designed for Grove Village by PRP Architects and Alan Baxter Associates and is based on the "home zone" concept first used in Holland. On-site it is being constructed by Gleeson Building. The transformation of Grove Village, a £100 million housing Private Finance initiative (PFI), is taking place at a great pace with the refurbishment of Manchester City Council’s homes nearing completion, the first phase of new build properties now finished with the new owners moving in and construction work on a new village centre of the A6 Stockport Road now underway. Grove Village Limited was established to deliver the housing PFI project for Manchester City Council. It was created by Harvest Housing Group, MJ Gleeson Group and Nationwide. As the first PFI to reach contract signing in 2003, a partnership of this nature had not been achieved before in the social housing sector. Today it is working incredibly well and demonstrating that PFI is a suitable delivery method for council housing and regeneration schemes. ENDS |
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