Embargo: for publication after 12noon Thursday 16th March 2000
Pioneering apartment block draws middle-income ‘singles’ back to the city 

The campaign to bring new life to inner cities takes an innovative step forward today with the official opening of apartments for private rent that have been specially designed to attract single people on middle incomes.

The opening ceremony for Britain’s first CASPAR – City-centre Apartments for Single People at Affordable Rents – is being performed in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter by Nick Raynsford MP, Housing Minister.

The demonstration project is the first of two developed by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in major cities. The other, in central Leeds, is nearing completion. Each CASPAR combines high architectural standards with finance arrangements that deliver a commercial return for investors while keeping rents to around £100 a week. Although built to a high density, the one-bedroom apartments are more spacious than usual, making them ideal for single people and couples without children.

Richard Best, the Foundation’s director, said: “City centres are increasingly places where accommodation is only available to those poor enough to secure subsidised ‘social’ housing, or rich enough to afford high-priced private apartments for sale. If people on middle incomes continue to shun our inner cities, those areas will face a bleak future.

“Yet we also know that growth in the number of single-person households is the force driving the expected demand for almost 4 million new homes in the next 20 years. The CASPAR initiative suggests a way of using the spending power, energy and creativity of single people to spearhead an urban renaissance, while easing some of the pressures for new homes that encroach on the countryside.”

The 46 canal-side apartments in Birmingham are the result of a design-and-build competition won by architects Allford Hall Monaghan Morris. Two blocks of five storeys each are linked by an atrium with glass roof and walls. The interior walkways are attractively lined with hardwood. A colourful mural and ground-floor mosaic were commissioned from local artists.

Night shot
(Click to enlarge)

Interior
(Click to enlarge)

Thanks to close co-operation between the Foundation, Birmingham City Council and the contractors, the project received speedy planning approval and building work was completed within a year. The total cost of the development is almost £3 million.

The unit cost of £65,100 per dwelling in Birmingham and in Leeds, means the projects have met their objective of offering some apartments at less than £100 a week rent. The developments are also on course to meet their target of bringing in a return on capital invested of 6 per cent a year, index-linked.

Nick Raynsford MP, Housing Minister, said: "It is vital that we make more efficient use of land if we are to preserve the countryside, seizing opportunities for development on re-cycled, brownfield land in our cities and bringing forward imaginative, well-designed and affordable schemes. The CASPAR projects are a welcome and timely example of how we can do just this, and so bring people back to city centres and promote the urban renaissance that Government policy so strongly supports. I congratulate the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on this splendid initiative."

Richard Best added: “Both CASPAR projects show that commercial investors can obtain favourable returns from this type of accommodation in city centres, with every prospect of income growth and long-term capital gains as the neighbourhood becomes more popular. We hope that commercial investors and developers will take this as their cue to build hundreds, if not thousands more of these developments, reversing decades of urban exodus and a century of decline for the private rented sector.”

Note to Editors
The opening ceremony for CASPAR I, Charlotte Street, Birmingham will be performed by Nick Raynsford MP, Housing Minister, at 11.30am, Thursday 16th March 2000. Members of the press are welcome.

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