What a difference £51.6M makes.

The award of new brownfield land funding to Manchester City Council has unlocked one of the largest regeneration projects in the UK.

The funding will be focused on remediation of the 48-acre slice of the city's northern inner neighbourhoods, which has been rebranded Northern Gateway.

Far East Consortium, the council’s major partner on the £1B Northern Gateway scheme, immediately announced the first images of its 634-home Victoria Riverside scheme, the first in the Red Bank part of the Northern Gateway.

A public consultation has begun on plans for three towers, with a 37-storey building marking the corner of Gould Street and Dantzic Street. The area is already blossoming as a tech district, taking large space users unable to fit into the more constrained Northern Quarter around Oldham Street. Two sister buildings of 18 and 26 storeys complete the development.

Designed by architects Hawkins\Brown with landscape architect Planit IE, the development will also feature commercial uses along Dantzic Street.

Manchester successfully bid for £51.6M from the government’s Housing Infrastructure Fund to unlock land for more than 5,500 new homes over the next 10 years.

Manchester City Council, supported by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, said the funding will remove infrastructure constraints, improve road access and new cycle and pedestrian routes, as well as begin work on creating a new public park along the river Irk.

The Northern Gateway project is just a small slice of a 372-acre development zone intended to see 15,000 new homes built over the years to 2035-2040.