Conversion of historic landmark fire and police station into quality affordable residential scheme.

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The fire station on Mather Avenue, immortalised in the Beatle’s song Penny Lane, is a cultural landmark and in conjunction with the adjoining police station, an important physical landmark within the neighbourhood.  Both buildings have stood empty for many years.

HLP have drawn up radical proposals to repurpose these buildings as high-quality residential accommodation providing much needed affordable housing.

The group of buildings presented a complex of disparate forms, much extended and modified over nearly a century, an accretion of the ages which required careful study and analysis to understand how this complex of industrial buildings could be sensitively converted into a quality residential scheme, preserving the historic quality of the more important buildings while removing or modifying elements which were incompatible with the new use.

HLP were acutely conscious of the historic associations of the buildings, their importance to the community as a landmark and the need to develop a high-quality living environment for future residents.

The design process was led by this contextual analysis and research and proceeded through a number of iterations, pursued in close collaboration with our client representatives.  To achieve a viable and sustainable project, HLP carried out a number of site studies which explored the potential of the buildings and the site.  We were working to strict cost/value parameters to ensure that the resulting project was firstly, financially viable and secondly, sustainable in the longer term.