What this £300m makeover reveals about Manchester city centre's future
12.03.2023 - 10:27
/ manchestereveningnews.co.uk
A major development in Manchester city centre has obtained planning permission at the Town Hall.
It promises to realise the potential of the industrial redbrick building, complete with new leisure opportunities, green space, and hundreds of flats. On the surface it's hardly anything new for Manchester.
But in reality, the plans for the historic Great Northern warehouse show how Manchester city centre could change over this decade. The proposals for the Grade II Deansgate building, which were approved in a mammoth four-hour planning meeting on February 16, are transformative.
READ MORE: The 50 best restaurants in Greater Manchester right now
The warehouse's last major regeneration saw it turned into a leisure complex in 1999. It originally opened a hundred years before that as a ‘three-way goods exchange’, where goods could arrive and be shipped out by rail, canal, or road, with 'nine acres of streets' razed to make way for it.
A year after its completion, 34 shops and offices opened on its Deansgate side. They’re still there today, housing some of the city’s best-known estate agents, high-end furniture companies, and eateries in the section called Deansgate Terrace.
The regeneration will retain the warehouse, terrace - and the Deansgate Mews section in between - as they are. But there are big changes afoot, too.
On its way out is the 'Leisure Box' extension - which was built in the 1990s - and currently houses an Odeon cinema, The Gym, and an NCP car park. In its place, 746 apartments will be built across three new buildings, 34-and-27-storeys tall.
There will also be 'high quality' office space at the 'centrepiece' of the project, with 150,000 sq ft of workspace planned for around 1,800 people, with some of that