Five hundred homes being built on the former Manchester Racecourse will have their own 'village green'.
Three acres will be used for landscaped open space including children's play areas.
There will also be a new primary school - but no affordable housing, as planning permission was granted in 2018, before a change in regulations which would have required them.
Work has now started on the £120m development, which is bookie Fred Done's bid to 'create something Salford can be proud of' by going back to where it all started for him.
The Castle Irwell site in Salford closed as a racecourse in 1963, and in 1973 the University of Salford built student accommodation blocks there - which were occupied until 2015.
Since then the 36-acre site has stood empty and become overgrown. Three years ago a racecourse stand was damaged by fire and later demolished.
The site was purchased from the University in 2018.
Fred began his career in betting on the course and later opened his first shop 200 yards away on Cromwell Road.
He aims to mark the site's history by naming the streets after jockeys and horses.
He told the M.E.N. last year: "I am a Salford boy and I want to create something that Salford can be proud of."
The first phase of the development is 157 homes of two, three, and four bedrooms with prices starting at just under £200,000. Twenty have already been snapped up.
The government's Help to Buy scheme is available and the first homes are expected to be finished by next spring.
Simon Ismail, who co-founded developers Salboy, with Fred, said: "This is a location with huge personal to us both and we want to create a very special place to live."
The site is on the edge of Kersal Vale Country Park and wetlands.
A turnstile building on Cromwell Road - the only remaining legacy from its former use - is being restored and used temporarily as a marketing suite.
Mr Ismail added: "Castle Irwell will be a contemporary new village, well designed, with high quality housing, where as much thought has been given to the surroundings and how people want to live as the house design, with lots of green space outside."
