Manchester Update

The multi-million pound redevelopment of one of the City’s most famous landmarks finally got underway at the beginning of September with the start of construction work on site at Manchester Arndale.

A £150m investment by Arndale owner Prudential, the project will see the part of Manchester Arndale to the north of Cannon Street including the old bus station partially demolished and rebuilt over the next 36 months to form an extended and revitalised centre. The redevelopment will complete Manchester City Council’s Millennium Master Plan for the regeneration of central Manchester.

The extension, which is being managed on a design and build contract by Bovis Lend Lease, is due for completion in stages from October 2005. It will see the creation of 75 new shop units and will increase retail space in the Arndale by 27,870 sq m to reach a total of 130,000 sq m.

Fashion and homeware retailer Next will occupy a new anchor store facing Exchange Square, the home of Selfridges and Harvey Nichols. With four trading floors and a striking glass façade, the store will be the largest Next in the UK and is programmed to open in time for Christmas trading 2005.

A new glass and steel feature entrance from Exchange Square will provide a gateway to a new mixed-use covered mall, New Cannon Street. A glass roof and contemporary street style architecture will be used to give the mall a high street feel.

An additional five variety stores and a revitalised single level Market Hall will cement Manchester Arndale’s status as the City’s prime retail destination. The work has meant that all bus stops on Cannon Street closed at the end of August. These will eventually be superseded by the new interchange at Shudehill. In the meantime services will use the former Victoria Bus Station, Long Millgate/Corporation Street and Stevenson Square. The free Metroshuttle bus Route 2 has been re-routed to take account of this.

Meanwhile work is coming to fruition on the £10m refurbishment of the southern half of the centre. Yellow tiles have gone, replaced with panels of 140 million-year-old Jura Limestone, while internally a glass rooflight allows natural light into Halle Square for the first time since the centre opened in 1979.

The structure, which features 42 insulated glass panels, is almost 16 metres in diameter and sits 22 metres above the square.

Supported on steel trusses weighing up to 15 tonnes, each panel is strong enough to carry the weight of a person – enabling window cleaning to take place. A complementary lighting system has been installed toensure the square remains bright whatever the weather. To complete the transformation, a new feature staircase linking the square’s upper and lower malls has been installed.

Prudential development director, Jon Weymouth, said: “This is a key milestone in our programme for the redevelopment of the Manchester Arndale and one that has already significantly enhanced the look of the centre. We wanted to create a ‘wow’ factor among visitors to Manchester Arndale and with this spectacular glazed rooflight I think we’ve done that. But the remodelling of Halle Square is just the beginning of our plans and as the transformation of the Centre gathers pace, we hope to create plenty more wows along the way.”

Manchester’s Edwardian Water Palace beat off competition from nine other endangered buildings to secure funds for renovation in a public vote by viewers of the BBC television series Restoration in September. Victoria Baths, one of the most opulent public swimming pools ever built, will also receive £3m pledged by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The Grade II listed baths opened in 1906 to serve the Longsight area of Manchester. Lavishly designed withstained-glass windows and ornate tiling, the building provided three pools, 64 wash baths as well as Turkish and Russian baths. Victoria Baths provided swimming and bathing facilities for nearly 90 years, closing in 1993 despite local protests.

Soon after the closure, the Victoria Baths Trust launched a campaign to bring it back into use as a £15m health and leisure centre. The money raised from the Restoration series will fund the first stage of the project – restoring the Turkish baths. In the final programme of the series more than two million votes were cast and more than 1.3 million phone votes during the ten programmes added £275,000 towards the Restoration prize, topped up with a £3m Heritage Lottery Fund grant.

The City Council, the Heritage Lottery Fund and government conservation adviser English Heritage are commissioning a feasibility study to see how the rest of the building can be renewed. The inclusion of bars or a restaurant has been mooted. The building would cost £15m to open as a public swimming pool complex.

Gill Wright, spokesman for the Victoria Baths Trust, said: “The feasibility study will look at all the options. The best use for a listed building is always the original use and we know we got a lot of votes because people wanted it to be restored for use as a swimming pool.

“But a use where we could keep the pool spaces open, like a bar-restaurant where people could use the balconies, would be preferable to a residential conversion.”

Construction work on the first stage of the building’s restoration will begin in October next year and a further lottery bid submitted towards the cost of restoring the rest of the building.

The Victoria Baths Trust runs an arts programme, supported by the Arts Council, the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund and Awards for All. There will be arts activities at Victoria Baths throughout next summer as well as regular public open days.

For more information about the Friends of Victoria Baths call 0161 224 2020, email victoriabaths@aol.com or visit the website at www.victoriabaths.org.uk

VICTORIA BATHS – 100 YEARS OF HISTORY

* The plan to provide baths to serve Longsight, St. Luke’s and Rusholme was first considered by the Baths & Wash-houses Committee of Manchester Corporation in 1897

* Original estimates for the construction of the baths were £57,000 in 1902, almost twice the usual cost of building public baths.

* By 1905 the cost of completing the building had climbed to over £59,000.

* When the baths opened in 1906 few people had a bathroom at home, so the slipper baths or wash-baths provided the first real bath for  many.

* Men and women bathers were segregated until 1924 when mixed bathing was introduced with great trepidation.

* Channel swimmer Sunny Lowry began her career at Victoria Baths. She successfully swam the channel in August 1933.

* Olympic swimmer John Besford also trained at the baths.

* In 1952 England’s first municipal aerotone therapeutic bath – a prototype jacuzzi – was installed.

* Victoria Baths closed in 1993. The Victoria Baths Trust carried out a £244,000 programme of emergency work in 2002 with funding from English Heritage and the A6 Partnership.

BUILDING ON SUCCESS

After Victoria Baths’ TV success, two more local landmarks are to be put under the spotlight in a new documentary which will exploit the new craze for old architecture. Historic Rose Hill in Northenden, which was built by Absalom Watkin and developed by his son Edward, has suffered years of dereliction and despair, but is now being transformed into apartments. The building will appear in a new Granada programme called Derelict Discoveries.

Also featured will be Hugh Mason House swimming baths in Ashton under Lyne. Mason, MP for Ashton in the 19th century, was a social reformer who regenerated the area and was the first to give workers weekends off.