Square deals

Yes, Maritime is a housing association. It is taking on the task of helping create mixed communities in Liverpool's booming city centre, and is loving every minute of it.

The city's new-found ethos of turning every problem into an opportunity is bringing long-derelict buildings back into use. As the facades get the makeover treatment, these grandiose former warehouses and storage depots from the shipping industry are revealed in all their splendour.

L3 was originally built as a Royal Mail sorting centre organised around a huge rectangular courtyard into which vans could drive to be loaded with post. Now, that glassed-in centre houses a peaceful space with wooden decking and an oriental-looking water feature. Best of all, it is there for all the residents to enjoy, be they Maritime buyers on an 80% deal or those plunging into the open market at £300,000 a shot.

The 80% deal is a device intended both to give a little help to those on middle incomes and to protect Maritime's investment by preventing buyers taking full ownership and then selling on to turn a fast profit.

Maritime has just 18 of the 100 or so apartments here but its chief executive, Andrea Titterington, says the housing association's presence is vital to ensure that the repopulation of the city does not turn it into an exclusive enclave for the wealthy.

Many of Maritime's customers are public service staff such as health workers, who cannot command the high salaries of the private sector; others are the middle-aged whose finances may have been dented by divorce but who like the city-centre buzz.

Maritime has struck deals on several similar developments, creating utterly urban living spaces within traditional buildings. Titterington stresses that the association always gets involved at the beginning of a project so that it can have the maximum influence on design. "We're not just buying apartments that are ready to move into," she says.

Foiling the profiteers
Other developments in the city include shared-ownership housing, which can start from a 25% stake. Here, however, Liverpool's recent success and the general stability in the country's economy have some potentially problematic side-effects.

Shared owners 10 years ago might have opted for a low-ownership stake with the rest paid in rent, because mortgages cost them dear. Now, after a long run of low interest rates, many opt to take 75% at the outset, because that is the threshold at which they pay no rent.

More worryingly, they may quickly sell on, handing themselves a tidy profit and moving up the property ladder after a very short time.

Titterington praises the Housing Corporation's support for city-centre living but says that it needs to tackle this problem. A cap to prevent customers taking full ownership – a strategy used on some rural sites – would ensure that the housing could be passed on to others in shared ownership.

Liverpool's boom time is all about confidence. Maritime decided that it wanted to demonstrate its own faith in the city by building its headquarters on a prominent but derelict site just round the corner from Lime Street Station.

On this site – which has been leased for 125 years from the city council – rose Commutation Plaza, an unashamedly modern building with Maritime's operations and staff in full view on the ground floor.

Above them is a mix of shared-ownership and rented housing built with partial funding from the Housing Corporation. Here, again, success caused a few difficulties. The hike in values between planning and realisation meant that two penthouses on the roof had to be sold outright. To offer them for shared ownership, as planned, would have handed the owners a golden chance for profit – not the best use of grant money.

Where the art is
Even in a boomtown, however, there is considerable risk in development. Maritime's operations lie at the heart of an area that the city council has designated as the artists' quarter – an area dedicated to nurturing talent and helping people develop businesses built around the arts.

To that end, Maritime is converting a series of old warehouses in the Ropewalks into flats, with 70 incubator units for artists and embryonic arts businesses to rent. They can get in for as little as £16.10/m2 – but the catch is that the rents gradually increase. This is done in an attempt to focus the occupiers' minds on developing the business side as well as the aesthetics.

The buildings as they stand today, however, prove the grit and determination of Maritime's governing board. The warehouses are not just empty, they are crumbling and teetering. Site assembly is a long and difficult task, and the Housing Corporation has had to exercise patience while Maritime lines up the various funding sources.

Exciting stuff, there's no question about it. But Titterington stresses that this is not just some jaunt carried out by a housing association turning its back on its traditional markets.

The city still faces formidable problems, as its recent series of reports on local housing markets have highlighted. It is bracing itself for one of the largest housing demolition programmes in the country, and many more homes desperately need improvement. The trick will be to embed the city's commercial uplift in all communities.

Maritime uses its city-centre work to cross-subsidise other, tougher locations where it also operates. One of these is a huge council estate surprisingly close to the city centre that is nevertheless extremely isolated.

Cleaning the slate
The whole estate is to be flattened, giving Maritime and other partners a chance to build new homes and create a layout that opens up the area, linking it to its neighbours.

To the north of the city, using a small-scale transfer of council houses as its starting point, the association is renovating and rebuilding, dispensing with 1970s layouts and creating private space. The intensive work in a relatively small area is paying dividends: the once blighted housing has become highly popular and community activity is thriving.

US-born Titterington is a huge advocate for Liverpool. The city may have fine buildings but when she talks about communities it is clear that this is her driving force. "People want us to do a good job," she says, "so that's what we are trying to do."