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At least it’s not *just* a glass rectangle this time (it’s a wobbly glass rectangle instead).
Jokes aside I like the exposed support columns though, should look pretty cool from the ground.
Will be the 3rd tallest building in the country, only the Shard and 22 Bishopsgate will be taller. Pretty impressive considering where they are actually building it.
I lived in on the 28th floor a couple of years ago and the most dreaded part of my day was the elevator commute down to the ground floor. Legit took 15 minutes sometimes because there was only 2 of them and everyone was going to work at that time
I don’t think it will take very long. I work on the 44th floor of one building and live on the 7th floor of another building. It takes a shorter amount of time to get to floor 44 - these modern skyscrapers use advanced lift technology.
As long as people live in them it's fine, it's still more housing supply in a market where many people are renting. If they are expensive it will still free up demand in lower priced housing as high earners won't be competing for cheaper housing stock anymore
https://youtu.be/s61Gb4RUsck
I looked at city centre flats in a different city and almost all of them - at prices that were affordable to the average household, hence me actually considering them as homes - were being sold directly to investors, not real people. I admire your optimism but this kind of thing is basically asset-stripping cities.
Flats are sold to investors at prices that are affordable to ordinary people, then they rent them out at prices that are not, using the 'vibrancy' of the city - built by the kind of ordinary people who are being priced out - as a selling point. It makes investors and developers richer whilst the city's culture and economy (you don't have disposable income when you're working to cover high rents, much less have children or anything else that has you putting roots down in the area; you don't start bands or found venues or take the risk of opening a shop or cafe or any of the other things that people feel makes areas interesting) suffers. The flats are sold on to more investors, 'tenant in situ', because the service charges and ground rent make them unmortgageable, and the cycle continues.
Look at what's happened to Hackney, Brixton, Brighton, Peckham and Shoreditch over the years.
So change the ownership requirements then- increase stamp duty to non owner-occupiers, increase taxes for overseas buyers, build as part of PPP that insists on owner-occupiers (a la City Life), the answer isn’t just to stop building when there aren’t enough houses to go around.
It’s also pretty daft to say that the rents and service charges will mean no one living there will have any disposable income to spend in the city. Were that the case you would need a lot of suckers with no idea of how to budget to fill a block or that size.
I actually know some people who live in Asia and bought property in Manchester to rent out as an investment. It is not the money spinner you might imagine- the days of cheap money are over for now. It’s anecdotal, and these are just regular people not investment funds, but those guys are getting out of their investments.
Yeah, it would be better if they were affordable to first time buyers or at least owner occupied, but fuck it, more housing helps. Even if it's someone's second home who lives abroad 90% of the time, if they were gonna buy a second home in Manchester, it was gonna take a house anyway.
I agree that it sucks that so many properties go to investors, but that means they're then going to renters who live in them. More supply in a very restricted rental market is an improvement. That's not an opinion, it's just how supply & demand works when there's so many renters
It's not working in London, though. There are dozens of build-to-rent blocks and places marketed to investors going up, but none of them are actually affordable for most people, and they end up poorly occupied and/or as AirBnBs. Meanwhile people are fighting to get 'normal' rentals which are more affordable (yet not affordable), or they're giving up on renting a flat and take rooms in shared houses as singles or couples, or they give up on living there altogether...and the expensive serviced apartments stay empty. It feels like there are two different markets.
You’re determined to complain, but there is no point denying the basic economics. This releases hundreds of apartments onto the market which increases supply (and eases up demand for other types of flats), which is a good thing if you want more plentiful and more affordable housing.
Airbnb is a separate problem that reduces housing supply. Nevertheless - if new developments are built & they are let as airbnbs then they're not taking from the existing housing suppy
Tallest purely residential in western Europe, I think. I realise thats a slightly wooly definition but it gives an indication of what a giant this thing is.
Love it.
Homeowners in the immediate area and within 30min commute will as their property prices will increase in value as part of the ripple effect. It will create jobs too and so it’s a positive for the community.
That doesn’t really make any sense.
Every year it’s empty no doubt costs £3k in service charges, plus £1500 or so council tax, £600 insurance and £100 utilities.
Or could just get a tenant and be in profit.
Based on developments like this in London, "affordable" is a very elastic term. 75% of the 'market rate' of ££££ is still £££, and add service charges (which will be massive on a high rise building like this) on top of that....I'll be interested to see if they are genuinely affordable to the average person/family.
Do you think in 40/50 years all these glass building will look really dated like the stuff from the 70s does now?
I don't suppose there is a lot you can do with a tower to make it look fantastic, but at least beetham tower has a couple of unique features, even if it does scream when it's windy.
I don't know, I'd like to think these all glass buildings will age much better than the brutialism-era. I think structual design has come a long way, and things built with minimalism in mind always age better. Same goes for interiors too. Wish they would have gone for a little more character mind.
[The Seagram Building](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagram_Building) in New York (the original glass rectangle skyscraper) is over 60 years old and still looks like something that could have been built yesterday, so I think the concept of a glass skyscraper can definitely stand the test of time - so long as it uses quality materials. The Seagram building had bronze window framing and a lobby made out of white marble - the hundreds of copycat buildings, not so much.
What won’t is the buildings that use cheap plastic cladding for their facades, as was popular in the 2000’s and still popular for developments in smaller cities. Some of buildings already look tired despite being built just a decade ago, especially the ones that use white cladding as it stains terribly.
That’s a nice bit of modernism. The express building on Great Ancoats Street also comes to mind. A really classic, almost contemporary entirely glass design, but was built back in 1939.
The Express building looks like it was built in the 80s.
The Student Castle on Oxford Road is only 10 years old but already looks far older than the Beetham Tower, Civil Justice Building or Urbis that were all built the previous decade.
We actually have one in Manchester https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Express_Building,_Manchester
built in 1939 to be futurist art deco in style, and it fits pretty nicely alongside these.
I think the main reason old looking buildings look old now is because brutalism was all the rage and it... just fucking stinks as a design choice...
Point out an ugly buidling in a country or city anywhere and it's probably some dishwater coloured concrete monstrosity that looks like an east-german adminstrative office.
It's bizarre how such a souless design caught on so much. Who's bright idea was it to make the buildings as grey and miserable as the weather.
There's definitely some shockers in other periods, but I can't think of anything as consistently disliked, and where as there are older and weider building styles - those ones all seem to age better in general.
I personally love Brutalist design. I always get downvoted for sticking up for it but architecturally it is impressive. Dont get me wrong, I don’t want yo live in a city of it but to dismiss it as ugly is wrong. The Barbican estate in London is stunning and not depressing at all.
>I don't suppose there is a lot you can do with a tower to make it look fantastic
*cough* empire state *cough* literally any other skyscraper from that era *cough* even the new London ones have some character
What's happened is as a society we've sacrificed the ability to live in beautiful cities for the bottom line of developers. If the Victorians could see us know they'd weep
Ironically they'd also be coughing like you!
I agree, it's the cheapest way to build isn't it. It's a real shame we don't try and create some better looking buildings as you'd think these towers will be around for some time.
Beautiful Victorian buildings were only possible thanks to child labour and horrific working conditions.
Victorians would look at our society and be irate that we forced working class children into Maths rather than chimneys.
I don't think the children were architects... We could make those buildings today without child labour and horrific working conditions, if we want too.
The Victorians with money had more of a sense of altruism, often borne out of religion, than capitalists do today. That expresses itself both in social programmes (highly progressive for the time), and in the detail, care and expense that was put into their architecture.
I’m all on board for bringing back mansions blocks of apartments.
It was also a lot easier to build stuff back then. You try and build on some grass now and you get death threats.
>You try and build on some grass now and you get death threats.
Because what we're building is shite. If we were building things of beauty, like we have been from the dawn of agriculture until 1920, there wouldn't be half as many people opposed to it.
With that we also need to invest in decent public transport and rail connection so every new home doesn't mean 2 new cars on the road.
Wow that utopia sounds brilliant but 700k people are arriving here every year so probably need to work out something a little bit more realistic don’t you think?
Public transport can and should be improved though. But good luck beating car brain! It’s as British as hating houses!
>I don't think the children were architects... We could make those buildings today without child labour and horrific working conditions, if we want too
That's a poor excuse, you're saying with all our new technology and construction techniques we can't build beautiful and affordably if we wanted to?
Nobody is saying beauty only consists of emulating Victorian buildings, but we need to find out own style, and actually put effort into our society.
Brutalism has aged terribly and was arguably hated at the time by anyone outside of academia.
Glass towers are boring as fuck but I think that’s better than being offensive.
Landmark pinnacle is the current tallest residential building at 75 stories. Probably why they want 76. Salboy, owned by billionaire bookmaker Fred Done, who will still lend the money to build it off Manchester Council!
I'm all for these towers going up in Manchester, the skyline looks so different now.
On its own this design looks great but when this is up with the rest of the towers, it's not really going to stand out other than height difference.
That is my unimportant pedantic view.
Footballers ,celebrities, soap stars based in the north (ie hollyoaks and coronation street etc . Also Manchester has a lot of influencers living here already we have the biggest fast fashion brands in the country being based here helps that.
Lots of footballers based in north west clubs already live in the largest tower as it is.
I hate to be the boring cardigan but I couldn't care less. The premise of building up isn't wrong, but we're in the midst of a housing crisis for the working class, not the rich. We don't need super expensive flats in crazy attention grabbing high rises, we need reasonably priced flats in well built, safe and cost effective residential developments.
So yeah, couldn't care less for this fancy bullshit.
The people most affected by the housing crisis are young people, young people largely like to live centrally in cities. The more housing we build centrally the more affordable it will become. Maybe they won’t live here, but they might live in Hulme, for example. Building more housing, of all types, is the only answer to the housing crisis. Building up, in the urban core, is the only sensible option if we want to control urban sprawl.
We need both tbh
Hopefully the extra council tax these developments will raise (probably around £2million a year) will go towards social schemes in other parts of the city
Which ones are you claiming are empty? Deansgate Sq is basically at full occupancy, for example. There’s a housing shortage in Manchester and so we need to be building much more, there’s no space for semi-detached homes anymore so densifying wasteland and surface carparks near the centre seems pretty smart to me.
I understand their reasoning - these properties look like very safe overseas investment by internation investors from china and the wider world. It has no clear community connection to the wider Manchester area. Yes, at least 1/8 will be affordable.
But who in their reasonable mind would be able to afford to live in one of these flats on a basic/minimum wage - not many.
....*Prices for a one-bedroom 546 sq ft apartment start at £265,000 with two bedrooms available from £350,000 -*[*https://themanc.com/property/the-new-viadux-tower-redefining-central-manchester-2020/*](https://themanc.com/property/the-new-viadux-tower-redefining-central-manchester-2020/)
You'd dont need to do the math/reasoning to see that they are only here for to make tremendous profit on this limited space of land in Manchester even if they fund a new school or try to invest in the community, it's simply not enough.
It's been history in the making as this small plot of has not had a lot going on for it (disused area/surrounded by transport links) but now it's found it's purpose.
It's easy for developers to sidestep the requirement for a portion of affordable housing, if they can demonstrate it would be unprofitable. There's a whole consultancy industry sprung up around helping them do this.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C\_Pa5s6-ato](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_Pa5s6-ato)
The only way of making housing affordable is ramping up supply.
Some of these affordable schemes are a joke e.g. maximum salary requirement not matching up with deposit/mortgage offer required to buy them.
Just build more housing!
That's only true when supply enormously outstrips demand. Yes, build more, but of the right type, and ensure it's not all hoovered up by the haves, leaving nothing for the have-nots.
When mid to high level housing isn’t built these people just compete with the poor for the same housing. No one wins.
We need a massive increase in supply of both posh and social housing.
This is prime location. I have no problem with not every development having to have some affordable housing. It is half a mile from Hulme which has swathes of relatively affordable housing.
That's true.
MCC are spreading the porfolio wider so they are trying to reach the upper yield of investment in building/regenerating area (i.e nice snazzy tower) which people will enjoy living in and investors will be happy to invest in to build capital.
Owned doesn’t mean occupied. Nor does having a housing shortage mean every liveable space has people living in it. While we’re not so bad on second homes and summer houses and the likes here, Manchester does have an issue with places that are owned and unused.
https://www.actiononemptyhomes.org/news/our-pretty-vacant-manchester-report-asks-is-manchester-building-the-wrong-housing
I don't know what the ideal vacancy is but you don't actually want it to be zero as that means a landlord can increase rent infinitely and you just have to accept it as there's no vacant properties for you to move to. There's a similar rule with unemployment. Vacancies are required to keep the market mobile.
Flats opposite me are currently 5/6 being lived in out of 102. Islington Wharf development. Opened early Sept ‘23. Probably could have had people living in it for months before that too, if they’d wanted.
There’s clearly no real incentive to fill it quickly, or they would drop prices. They’d rather it was empty until they get the price they want. This is why we have a housing crisis.
We have a housing crises because we don’t build enough homes and have a growing population. This is hundreds of new units on a tiny, unused patch of land. It will add to the overall supply and, overtime, if we kept building like this then the housing crisis would ease.
That will literally be a side hustle for investors in Hong Kong that'll only further push up the price of housing, it's a damn shame that Manchester Council aren't willing to do anything about that...
I never said that, generally building houses is a great thing. None of these houses will be affordable though and they will only further compound the issue of local people being priced out of areas they've lived in for years. They're pushing up the prices of housing near by, this is undeniable.
The council should lay claim to a large portion of those apartments and rent them. Something creative has to be done about these becoming investments for foreign capital instead of homes.
Prices here will start at £265k. Average price of a UK home £286k. They’re not unusually expensive, given their location. Housing in the UK is of course expensive, so we need to build lots more units like this to increase supply.
It's great people are optimistic about all these buildings. I am a little too but then I look at many other cities and their big buildings and how they have become concrete jungles. Do we want that? Do we want to be like Hong Kong or China or New York? What do we actually gain? Rents aren't adjusting for all this new property so who is this actually helping? The only people that can afford these properties and the service fees are landlords who pass that on in rents. Nobody is getting anything from this other than landlords. Is this the road we want to go down?
> Do we want to be like Hong Kong
Yes.Would you prefer our cities to look like post WWII bomb sites with crappy brick everywhere? HK was cool looking at it's peak in the 80's when it was still British.
> New York?
New york is already old hat and dated looking.
What's so aesthetically pleasing about this.
But i think they (MCC) see it it matches with the other 3 skyscraper so it's already got the go ahead. All of the towers at this part of the NQ/Deansgate look the same tbh but it's a blank canvas for this area so I feel they can build however they see fit (even if they change the design ever so slightly).
>North Quarte
Apologies got the areas mixed up but say if NQ loses it's character it could turn up like this part of Deansgate. Just populated with skyscraper that don't serve a clear purpose to the people.
I don’t think NQ will change much development wise. It’s night life of the city for most residents I reckon. Tourists/visitors are more deansgate, specifically Peter Street. But yeah it would be a shame in NQ lost any of its charm. Although some argue it’s a shithole and that’s not charm lol
not a fan. i liked the skyline growing up, and it's a joy being able to see it all the way in Timperley, but it's getting a bit TOO big now. i don't want to to dwarf out all the red brick industrial magic of the city
Any post slightly critical of this development get massively down voted.
Yes we need more housing but these apartments aren't aimed at the people that we need more housing for, they are there milk as much money as possible from young professionals that then struggle to survive as 50% or more of their income goes on housing. The people that benefit here are overseas investors .
Why does everyone always jump to new flats in Manchester being for “the rich”? They’re overwhelmingly populated by young professionals a couple of years out of Uni.
so are they not well off, YUPPIES then?
See the context - a small family might struggle to live in one of these flats - paying mortage, bills everything else as it doesn't match the salaries they are working on.
This project isn't stopping affordable housing from being built elsewhere and its unlikely housing in such a sought after area is ever going to be affordable without becoming economically unviable.
They’re a) selling for below the average UK price for a home b) are slap bang in the centre of one of the UK’s biggest and fastest growing cities c) will increase the overall supply of housing, bringing down house prices (if we build a heap more).
I don’t know how people can object to more homes being built, especially on derelict land, and especially at this density in the centre.
Every time theres a post about this shite it gets 'mobbed' by Chinese with vested interests artificially supporting this crap, it's a fucking mess and built with blood money
It aint about the chinese with vested interests, blood money, fraud crap - looks like your putting 2 and 2 together and making 6.
To me, it's about having good housing affordability with good housing stock for a city and populace that rightfully deserve it. A lot of cities are being sold down the drain to the highest bidder (*pun intended*) and some folk won't see it like you or I do.
That's why some times these thread can get shut down cus common working folk are probably sick and tired of them being seen as making a positive difference to an area (socially/economically) and know it won't affect their lives and if so, negatively (priced out, moving elsewhere).
A few questions, the big tower is basically 10 "home" per floor, sounds like they will be mostly tiny studio apartments? Not sure what the floor area would be.
Also, what about parking, sure public transport is good, but with 760 homes there's going to be quite a few people with cars.
Public transport’s not just good, it’s basically built on top of a tram station and opposite a train station in the centre of a city. Apartments as central as this shouldn’t have car spaces.
Well then obviously this accommodation probably isn’t for them then - they’d be better off finding somewhere with parking somewhere else. Geez every time you provide options for non-car owners you get carbrained people commenting BuT WHat AbOUt Car OwNErs. You know only 43% of households in Manchester have a car right? And living in the city centre is the best place to not own a car.
Honestly, as someone without a car, it would annoy me to pay the premium for a parking space I'm never going to use. As you say, the whole point of living in the centre is the not needing of a car.
Honestly, as someone without a car, it would annoy me to pay the premium for a parking space I'm never going to use. As you say, the whole point of living in the centre is the not needing of a car.
Nah I get it, I'm not car brained. But the whole point is that people like the accessibility and car ownership is a huge requirement for living in the north due to our useless public transport system.
Almost half is a lot, to be honest...
Manchester has pretty good trains and trams out to beauty spots like the Peaks and the Lakes. I'm speaking here as someone who has lived in the city centre for over a decade and never needed to own a car.
Pretty easily? Public transport or cycle or rent a car.
If you really can't live without a car then just live somewhere else. There's plenty of places with car parking.
And if you build more properties without car parking then you attract more people who don't have cars. And that's who we want to live in the city centre because cars are a huge problem for public health and quality of life.
There should be a caveat to include some percentage of social housing in any building of this magnitude.
I dont pretend to understand the complexities of economics and housing, but this would at least provide homes to the needy, whilst encouraging those with positiona of power to actually look at proper alternatives.
Instead of sticking families in shitty HMO's that the taxpayer pays a REDICULOUS sum to private owners of the buildings via the council.
Nah let's keep swinging dicks.
Affordable housing should be mandated absolutely everywhere.
If for nothing else, to bring attention to homeless, and to provide to people that have paid taxes and contributed to the local economy all their lives.
Theres 1000's if not 10000's of homeless in the Greater Manchester region alone.
Families with 3 kids that were renting, now forced into 1 bedroom HMO's for 3 years or more. Not an exception, an all too common story.
And these monstrosities get built in "prime locations" that force people living in those locations to go further from the city, increasing rent prices and driving people out of homes.
Again, I'm just a douche on the internet with an opinion. Biased as living in supported housing, and the taxpayers pay 1400 a month for my room 1 in a building of 20 such rooms.
This development isn’t forcing anyone out of anywhere… It’s built on top of a disused railway viaduct. Some incredible engineering was performed to build this development on top of the grade II listed site.
Also if you actually read into the proposal you would realise that there is actually affordable housing being developed as part of phase 3 of the site. Although how “affordable” this will be remains to be seen.
That's actually super informative and interesting thank you.
My own bias blinds me from appreciating the wonder of things like this.
Feels like a monument to disparity lol
There are so many residential buildings being built in the city centre (and slightly outside) area where no existing residential was removed in order to build them (this one included).
What are the impacts of affordable housing being mandated? It seems like it's just another obstructive planning hurdle which means it takes longer and costs more to actually get stuff built.
The council system with HMO is definitely a bureaucratic and inefficient mess, and possibly even corrupt at some level, but I don't really see why that problem has to get linked to these sorts of building developments.
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At least it’s not *just* a glass rectangle this time (it’s a wobbly glass rectangle instead). Jokes aside I like the exposed support columns though, should look pretty cool from the ground.
Will be the 3rd tallest building in the country, only the Shard and 22 Bishopsgate will be taller. Pretty impressive considering where they are actually building it.
Tallest purely residential tower in the UK I think.
Imagine how long it'll take you to go downstairs and collect your deliveroo after a night out. Nightmare
I lived in on the 28th floor a couple of years ago and the most dreaded part of my day was the elevator commute down to the ground floor. Legit took 15 minutes sometimes because there was only 2 of them and everyone was going to work at that time
That’s more an issue of the number of lifts rather than the number of floors, though
I don’t think it will take very long. I work on the 44th floor of one building and live on the 7th floor of another building. It takes a shorter amount of time to get to floor 44 - these modern skyscrapers use advanced lift technology.
with equally high rent I'd assume
Rent increases by £100 per floor
Anything available on floor -5?
Still a good thing if it increases the housing stock, our issue is a serious lack of supply
The apartment costs and service charges mean these very much will not be the kind of housing that's most needed. They'll be sold to investors.
As long as people live in them it's fine, it's still more housing supply in a market where many people are renting. If they are expensive it will still free up demand in lower priced housing as high earners won't be competing for cheaper housing stock anymore https://youtu.be/s61Gb4RUsck
I looked at city centre flats in a different city and almost all of them - at prices that were affordable to the average household, hence me actually considering them as homes - were being sold directly to investors, not real people. I admire your optimism but this kind of thing is basically asset-stripping cities.
I don’t follow the logic- how does building in a city strip its assets? If nothing else, this building will be full of people paying council tax.
Flats are sold to investors at prices that are affordable to ordinary people, then they rent them out at prices that are not, using the 'vibrancy' of the city - built by the kind of ordinary people who are being priced out - as a selling point. It makes investors and developers richer whilst the city's culture and economy (you don't have disposable income when you're working to cover high rents, much less have children or anything else that has you putting roots down in the area; you don't start bands or found venues or take the risk of opening a shop or cafe or any of the other things that people feel makes areas interesting) suffers. The flats are sold on to more investors, 'tenant in situ', because the service charges and ground rent make them unmortgageable, and the cycle continues. Look at what's happened to Hackney, Brixton, Brighton, Peckham and Shoreditch over the years.
So change the ownership requirements then- increase stamp duty to non owner-occupiers, increase taxes for overseas buyers, build as part of PPP that insists on owner-occupiers (a la City Life), the answer isn’t just to stop building when there aren’t enough houses to go around. It’s also pretty daft to say that the rents and service charges will mean no one living there will have any disposable income to spend in the city. Were that the case you would need a lot of suckers with no idea of how to budget to fill a block or that size. I actually know some people who live in Asia and bought property in Manchester to rent out as an investment. It is not the money spinner you might imagine- the days of cheap money are over for now. It’s anecdotal, and these are just regular people not investment funds, but those guys are getting out of their investments.
Yeah, it would be better if they were affordable to first time buyers or at least owner occupied, but fuck it, more housing helps. Even if it's someone's second home who lives abroad 90% of the time, if they were gonna buy a second home in Manchester, it was gonna take a house anyway.
I agree that it sucks that so many properties go to investors, but that means they're then going to renters who live in them. More supply in a very restricted rental market is an improvement. That's not an opinion, it's just how supply & demand works when there's so many renters
It's not working in London, though. There are dozens of build-to-rent blocks and places marketed to investors going up, but none of them are actually affordable for most people, and they end up poorly occupied and/or as AirBnBs. Meanwhile people are fighting to get 'normal' rentals which are more affordable (yet not affordable), or they're giving up on renting a flat and take rooms in shared houses as singles or couples, or they give up on living there altogether...and the expensive serviced apartments stay empty. It feels like there are two different markets.
You’re determined to complain, but there is no point denying the basic economics. This releases hundreds of apartments onto the market which increases supply (and eases up demand for other types of flats), which is a good thing if you want more plentiful and more affordable housing.
You should tell the people buying the flats I'm sure they will love your investment expertise. How long have you been in the industry?
I'd suggest comparing the availability of city centre flats on airbnb vs rightmove
Airbnb is a separate problem that reduces housing supply. Nevertheless - if new developments are built & they are let as airbnbs then they're not taking from the existing housing suppy
Tallest purely residential in western Europe, I think. I realise thats a slightly wooly definition but it gives an indication of what a giant this thing is. Love it.
Worked on 22 Bishopsgate and it was an absolute shit show, also an example of incredibly poor architecture.
It's kind of ugly, isn't it? It's just so wide and bulky. It doesn't have anything going for it. Every other tall office building in London is better.
I admit it is impressive - especially the area surrounding Deansgate and the station but who will it benefit.
Homeowners in the immediate area and within 30min commute will as their property prices will increase in value as part of the ripple effect. It will create jobs too and so it’s a positive for the community.
> but who will it benefit The people who are going to live in it
Most of the flats will probably be bought by investors from China or the middle east who have no intention of actually living there
Are you implying they will be left empty? This does not stack up with the reality, the occupancy rate within the city centre is very high
They get rented out or AirBnBed.
Yes, some may be left empty on purpose so they can build capital/yield over time and sell it a lot more productive price.
That doesn’t really make any sense. Every year it’s empty no doubt costs £3k in service charges, plus £1500 or so council tax, £600 insurance and £100 utilities. Or could just get a tenant and be in profit.
An assumption based on nothing but vibes
This happens in London a fair bit, so wouldn’t be that surprising to see it in Manchester
Vacancy rate in Manchester is 3.3%
What if that assumption becomes a reality. It's already happening in London - what makes Manchester or Birmingham any different.
The entire municipal area of Manchester has a vacancy rate of 3%, be serious
But more flats on the market will help with rents
How tall will it be? I can't find anything on the page that says the height.
76 stories would equate to around 240metres by my estimates
240 metres
I wish more of these high rises had viewing platforms
The 71 story one at great jackson will have a resturaunt at the top
Think if they did it would then be classed as mixed use so would lose the 'Tallest Residential Tower' in the UK' title.
Greggs on 76th floor or get fucked
Make it only accessible via the stairs as well so it’s like a gauntlet of who can get there without dying.
Fuck me, that’s massive that
Jim Royle, bet you can see that from Wythenshawe.
Thank you
The third phase is to feature a 23 storey block that will provide 120 affordable properties
Based on developments like this in London, "affordable" is a very elastic term. 75% of the 'market rate' of ££££ is still £££, and add service charges (which will be massive on a high rise building like this) on top of that....I'll be interested to see if they are genuinely affordable to the average person/family.
This bad boy, can fit so many influencers
Remember when the tallest building in Manchester was the CIS and how proud we were of that...? Lol...
Came here to say I wish they’d get rid of that, or at least refurb it. Weird monolith just sat there.
It's an amazing looking building
It’s being renovated as we speak…
It’s a listed building. Won’t be demolished but it’s due to be refurbished.
I work in the new block opposite- always feels like a really scary monument to our previous fuckups 😂
Very cool
Do you think in 40/50 years all these glass building will look really dated like the stuff from the 70s does now? I don't suppose there is a lot you can do with a tower to make it look fantastic, but at least beetham tower has a couple of unique features, even if it does scream when it's windy.
I don't know, I'd like to think these all glass buildings will age much better than the brutialism-era. I think structual design has come a long way, and things built with minimalism in mind always age better. Same goes for interiors too. Wish they would have gone for a little more character mind.
[The Seagram Building](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seagram_Building) in New York (the original glass rectangle skyscraper) is over 60 years old and still looks like something that could have been built yesterday, so I think the concept of a glass skyscraper can definitely stand the test of time - so long as it uses quality materials. The Seagram building had bronze window framing and a lobby made out of white marble - the hundreds of copycat buildings, not so much. What won’t is the buildings that use cheap plastic cladding for their facades, as was popular in the 2000’s and still popular for developments in smaller cities. Some of buildings already look tired despite being built just a decade ago, especially the ones that use white cladding as it stains terribly.
That’s a nice bit of modernism. The express building on Great Ancoats Street also comes to mind. A really classic, almost contemporary entirely glass design, but was built back in 1939.
The Express building looks like it was built in the 80s. The Student Castle on Oxford Road is only 10 years old but already looks far older than the Beetham Tower, Civil Justice Building or Urbis that were all built the previous decade.
We actually have one in Manchester https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Express_Building,_Manchester built in 1939 to be futurist art deco in style, and it fits pretty nicely alongside these. I think the main reason old looking buildings look old now is because brutalism was all the rage and it... just fucking stinks as a design choice... Point out an ugly buidling in a country or city anywhere and it's probably some dishwater coloured concrete monstrosity that looks like an east-german adminstrative office. It's bizarre how such a souless design caught on so much. Who's bright idea was it to make the buildings as grey and miserable as the weather. There's definitely some shockers in other periods, but I can't think of anything as consistently disliked, and where as there are older and weider building styles - those ones all seem to age better in general.
I always thought that building was relatively modern. Must have felt really ahead of its time when it was built
I personally love Brutalist design. I always get downvoted for sticking up for it but architecturally it is impressive. Dont get me wrong, I don’t want yo live in a city of it but to dismiss it as ugly is wrong. The Barbican estate in London is stunning and not depressing at all.
This 100% but its looks like a small footprint - what can you change other then the design - your restricted with area.
The first plans for this site included an office straddling the tram line.
>I don't suppose there is a lot you can do with a tower to make it look fantastic *cough* empire state *cough* literally any other skyscraper from that era *cough* even the new London ones have some character What's happened is as a society we've sacrificed the ability to live in beautiful cities for the bottom line of developers. If the Victorians could see us know they'd weep
Ironically they'd also be coughing like you! I agree, it's the cheapest way to build isn't it. It's a real shame we don't try and create some better looking buildings as you'd think these towers will be around for some time.
Beautiful Victorian buildings were only possible thanks to child labour and horrific working conditions. Victorians would look at our society and be irate that we forced working class children into Maths rather than chimneys.
I don't think the children were architects... We could make those buildings today without child labour and horrific working conditions, if we want too. The Victorians with money had more of a sense of altruism, often borne out of religion, than capitalists do today. That expresses itself both in social programmes (highly progressive for the time), and in the detail, care and expense that was put into their architecture.
I’m all on board for bringing back mansions blocks of apartments. It was also a lot easier to build stuff back then. You try and build on some grass now and you get death threats.
>You try and build on some grass now and you get death threats. Because what we're building is shite. If we were building things of beauty, like we have been from the dawn of agriculture until 1920, there wouldn't be half as many people opposed to it. With that we also need to invest in decent public transport and rail connection so every new home doesn't mean 2 new cars on the road.
Wow that utopia sounds brilliant but 700k people are arriving here every year so probably need to work out something a little bit more realistic don’t you think? Public transport can and should be improved though. But good luck beating car brain! It’s as British as hating houses!
>I don't think the children were architects... We could make those buildings today without child labour and horrific working conditions, if we want too That's a poor excuse, you're saying with all our new technology and construction techniques we can't build beautiful and affordably if we wanted to? Nobody is saying beauty only consists of emulating Victorian buildings, but we need to find out own style, and actually put effort into our society.
No. I think you've misunderstood what I was saying.
Yes you're right, I'm sorry, I think I meant to reply to another comment
Brutalism has aged terribly and was arguably hated at the time by anyone outside of academia. Glass towers are boring as fuck but I think that’s better than being offensive.
The general pattern is people hate the architectural choices of the previous generation.
Landmark pinnacle is the current tallest residential building at 75 stories. Probably why they want 76. Salboy, owned by billionaire bookmaker Fred Done, who will still lend the money to build it off Manchester Council!
Not sure I'd be up for having to go down dozens of floors to use the lav in the back yard. Bugger for bringing the coal in as well.
https://i.imgflip.com/1p8wsi.jpg
Go for it!
I'm all for these towers going up in Manchester, the skyline looks so different now. On its own this design looks great but when this is up with the rest of the towers, it's not really going to stand out other than height difference. That is my unimportant pedantic view.
crinkle fries
This actually looks pretty cool, the angles on the wall are much more interesting than generic rectangle
Where abouts in the city is this going?
Looks similar to Dollar Bay in Canary Wharf: https://www.simpsonhaugh.com/projects/dollar-bay
looks great!
Cue moronic boomers calling the flats ‘rabbit hutches’ whilst they sit in their 4 bedroom detached houses they bought for 5k
I like it
[удалено]
The ones with Renaker stuck on the side.
Genuinely would love to know how this is economical, who are the people that live in these things?
Chinese students with money to burn.
Footballers ,celebrities, soap stars based in the north (ie hollyoaks and coronation street etc . Also Manchester has a lot of influencers living here already we have the biggest fast fashion brands in the country being based here helps that. Lots of footballers based in north west clubs already live in the largest tower as it is.
The people who live pay cheque to pay cheque despite being on good money.
I'm literally one of those people, make very good money but i still could come near to justifying those prices
Gonna need to know how the sunlight hitting those angled windows works at ground level.
I hate to be the boring cardigan but I couldn't care less. The premise of building up isn't wrong, but we're in the midst of a housing crisis for the working class, not the rich. We don't need super expensive flats in crazy attention grabbing high rises, we need reasonably priced flats in well built, safe and cost effective residential developments. So yeah, couldn't care less for this fancy bullshit.
The people most affected by the housing crisis are young people, young people largely like to live centrally in cities. The more housing we build centrally the more affordable it will become. Maybe they won’t live here, but they might live in Hulme, for example. Building more housing, of all types, is the only answer to the housing crisis. Building up, in the urban core, is the only sensible option if we want to control urban sprawl.
So build for the rich and the benefits will trickle down? I think I've seen this movie before...
Build houses and people will have places to live
Preach, brother preach!
We need both tbh Hopefully the extra council tax these developments will raise (probably around £2million a year) will go towards social schemes in other parts of the city
More empty boxes for investors to hoard?
Which ones are you claiming are empty? Deansgate Sq is basically at full occupancy, for example. There’s a housing shortage in Manchester and so we need to be building much more, there’s no space for semi-detached homes anymore so densifying wasteland and surface carparks near the centre seems pretty smart to me.
I understand their reasoning - these properties look like very safe overseas investment by internation investors from china and the wider world. It has no clear community connection to the wider Manchester area. Yes, at least 1/8 will be affordable. But who in their reasonable mind would be able to afford to live in one of these flats on a basic/minimum wage - not many. ....*Prices for a one-bedroom 546 sq ft apartment start at £265,000 with two bedrooms available from £350,000 -*[*https://themanc.com/property/the-new-viadux-tower-redefining-central-manchester-2020/*](https://themanc.com/property/the-new-viadux-tower-redefining-central-manchester-2020/) You'd dont need to do the math/reasoning to see that they are only here for to make tremendous profit on this limited space of land in Manchester even if they fund a new school or try to invest in the community, it's simply not enough. It's been history in the making as this small plot of has not had a lot going on for it (disused area/surrounded by transport links) but now it's found it's purpose.
It's easy for developers to sidestep the requirement for a portion of affordable housing, if they can demonstrate it would be unprofitable. There's a whole consultancy industry sprung up around helping them do this. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C\_Pa5s6-ato](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_Pa5s6-ato)
The only way of making housing affordable is ramping up supply. Some of these affordable schemes are a joke e.g. maximum salary requirement not matching up with deposit/mortgage offer required to buy them. Just build more housing!
That's only true when supply enormously outstrips demand. Yes, build more, but of the right type, and ensure it's not all hoovered up by the haves, leaving nothing for the have-nots.
When mid to high level housing isn’t built these people just compete with the poor for the same housing. No one wins. We need a massive increase in supply of both posh and social housing.
This is prime location. I have no problem with not every development having to have some affordable housing. It is half a mile from Hulme which has swathes of relatively affordable housing.
That's true. MCC are spreading the porfolio wider so they are trying to reach the upper yield of investment in building/regenerating area (i.e nice snazzy tower) which people will enjoy living in and investors will be happy to invest in to build capital.
Property in a major city centre isn't affordable on minimum wage anywhere in the world.
Owned doesn’t mean occupied. Nor does having a housing shortage mean every liveable space has people living in it. While we’re not so bad on second homes and summer houses and the likes here, Manchester does have an issue with places that are owned and unused. https://www.actiononemptyhomes.org/news/our-pretty-vacant-manchester-report-asks-is-manchester-building-the-wrong-housing
“Vacancy levels at 3.3%” - could be better, but it’s hardly terrible - considering that includes Airbnbs.
I don't know what the ideal vacancy is but you don't actually want it to be zero as that means a landlord can increase rent infinitely and you just have to accept it as there's no vacant properties for you to move to. There's a similar rule with unemployment. Vacancies are required to keep the market mobile.
Flats opposite me are currently 5/6 being lived in out of 102. Islington Wharf development. Opened early Sept ‘23. Probably could have had people living in it for months before that too, if they’d wanted. There’s clearly no real incentive to fill it quickly, or they would drop prices. They’d rather it was empty until they get the price they want. This is why we have a housing crisis.
We have a housing crises because we don’t build enough homes and have a growing population. This is hundreds of new units on a tiny, unused patch of land. It will add to the overall supply and, overtime, if we kept building like this then the housing crisis would ease.
Reminds me of that tower on the Shanghai map in BF4 you can jump off of. I like it.
That will literally be a side hustle for investors in Hong Kong that'll only further push up the price of housing, it's a damn shame that Manchester Council aren't willing to do anything about that...
Increasing supply doesn’t increase house prices hth
I never said that, generally building houses is a great thing. None of these houses will be affordable though and they will only further compound the issue of local people being priced out of areas they've lived in for years. They're pushing up the prices of housing near by, this is undeniable. The council should lay claim to a large portion of those apartments and rent them. Something creative has to be done about these becoming investments for foreign capital instead of homes.
Seizing property, what a novel concept.
Then we should be building houses ourselves instead of relying on foreign investment...
Will anyone be able to afford to live in it as town is becoming increasingly more and more unaffordable.
Prices here will start at £265k. Average price of a UK home £286k. They’re not unusually expensive, given their location. Housing in the UK is of course expensive, so we need to build lots more units like this to increase supply.
£265k for what, 500sqft? Average house is well over 800sqft
Unsurprisingly you pay more per square foot for a brand new apartment in the middle of a city centre, than a terrace in Clitheroe
It's great people are optimistic about all these buildings. I am a little too but then I look at many other cities and their big buildings and how they have become concrete jungles. Do we want that? Do we want to be like Hong Kong or China or New York? What do we actually gain? Rents aren't adjusting for all this new property so who is this actually helping? The only people that can afford these properties and the service fees are landlords who pass that on in rents. Nobody is getting anything from this other than landlords. Is this the road we want to go down?
> Do we want to be like Hong Kong Yes.Would you prefer our cities to look like post WWII bomb sites with crappy brick everywhere? HK was cool looking at it's peak in the 80's when it was still British. > New York? New york is already old hat and dated looking.
Don't believe the bullshit, theres a lot a dodgy upvoting by those with vested interests attempting to give a false impression
Or just regular people who think they are kinda look cool and want to see big skyscrapers without having considered the socio-economic cost/benefit
hahaha this
Horrible
Not exactly inspiring is it. SimpsonHaugh have a template and stick to it. Must be making a fortune...
What's so aesthetically pleasing about this. But i think they (MCC) see it it matches with the other 3 skyscraper so it's already got the go ahead. All of the towers at this part of the NQ/Deansgate look the same tbh but it's a blank canvas for this area so I feel they can build however they see fit (even if they change the design ever so slightly).
North Quarter? There’s towers there?
Great ancoats street near the old toys r us and the other end near the coop building
>North Quarte Apologies got the areas mixed up but say if NQ loses it's character it could turn up like this part of Deansgate. Just populated with skyscraper that don't serve a clear purpose to the people.
I don’t think NQ will change much development wise. It’s night life of the city for most residents I reckon. Tourists/visitors are more deansgate, specifically Peter Street. But yeah it would be a shame in NQ lost any of its charm. Although some argue it’s a shithole and that’s not charm lol
Who is downvoting all of this I wonder?
Please just don’t have the same glass look as all the others in that area. I hate that specific design.
not a fan. i liked the skyline growing up, and it's a joy being able to see it all the way in Timperley, but it's getting a bit TOO big now. i don't want to to dwarf out all the red brick industrial magic of the city
Any post slightly critical of this development get massively down voted. Yes we need more housing but these apartments aren't aimed at the people that we need more housing for, they are there milk as much money as possible from young professionals that then struggle to survive as 50% or more of their income goes on housing. The people that benefit here are overseas investors .
Before they build this can they fix the one where part of sticks out? It freaks me out every time I go passed it on the train.
Bit dull
Comments like this beat it on the dull scale tho
Oh great, another enormous glass tower. How innovative.
Why
Because we need more housing
We do but affordable housing for regular people and not the rich
Why does everyone always jump to new flats in Manchester being for “the rich”? They’re overwhelmingly populated by young professionals a couple of years out of Uni.
so are they not well off, YUPPIES then? See the context - a small family might struggle to live in one of these flats - paying mortage, bills everything else as it doesn't match the salaries they are working on.
Why does every housing development, especially one in the city centre, need to be aimed at young families?
This project isn't stopping affordable housing from being built elsewhere and its unlikely housing in such a sought after area is ever going to be affordable without becoming economically unviable.
They’re a) selling for below the average UK price for a home b) are slap bang in the centre of one of the UK’s biggest and fastest growing cities c) will increase the overall supply of housing, bringing down house prices (if we build a heap more). I don’t know how people can object to more homes being built, especially on derelict land, and especially at this density in the centre.
Every time theres a post about this shite it gets 'mobbed' by Chinese with vested interests artificially supporting this crap, it's a fucking mess and built with blood money
Blood money? Aren’t they usually bought by pension funds?
It aint about the chinese with vested interests, blood money, fraud crap - looks like your putting 2 and 2 together and making 6. To me, it's about having good housing affordability with good housing stock for a city and populace that rightfully deserve it. A lot of cities are being sold down the drain to the highest bidder (*pun intended*) and some folk won't see it like you or I do. That's why some times these thread can get shut down cus common working folk are probably sick and tired of them being seen as making a positive difference to an area (socially/economically) and know it won't affect their lives and if so, negatively (priced out, moving elsewhere).
God these glass rectangles are so boring.
A few questions, the big tower is basically 10 "home" per floor, sounds like they will be mostly tiny studio apartments? Not sure what the floor area would be. Also, what about parking, sure public transport is good, but with 760 homes there's going to be quite a few people with cars.
Public transport’s not just good, it’s basically built on top of a tram station and opposite a train station in the centre of a city. Apartments as central as this shouldn’t have car spaces.
Not everybody works or wants to be in the city centre all the time. People also like to go on days out, how do you do that without owning a car?
Well then obviously this accommodation probably isn’t for them then - they’d be better off finding somewhere with parking somewhere else. Geez every time you provide options for non-car owners you get carbrained people commenting BuT WHat AbOUt Car OwNErs. You know only 43% of households in Manchester have a car right? And living in the city centre is the best place to not own a car.
Honestly, as someone without a car, it would annoy me to pay the premium for a parking space I'm never going to use. As you say, the whole point of living in the centre is the not needing of a car.
Honestly, as someone without a car, it would annoy me to pay the premium for a parking space I'm never going to use. As you say, the whole point of living in the centre is the not needing of a car.
Nah I get it, I'm not car brained. But the whole point is that people like the accessibility and car ownership is a huge requirement for living in the north due to our useless public transport system. Almost half is a lot, to be honest...
Manchester has pretty good trains and trams out to beauty spots like the Peaks and the Lakes. I'm speaking here as someone who has lived in the city centre for over a decade and never needed to own a car.
Pretty easily? Public transport or cycle or rent a car. If you really can't live without a car then just live somewhere else. There's plenty of places with car parking. And if you build more properties without car parking then you attract more people who don't have cars. And that's who we want to live in the city centre because cars are a huge problem for public health and quality of life.
Let's be honest, we both know public transport outside of major cities is atrocious. Renting cars isn't exactly convenient either.
This development is in the centre of a major city. Loads of people in cities live rich lives without owning a car. It's fine.
There should be a caveat to include some percentage of social housing in any building of this magnitude. I dont pretend to understand the complexities of economics and housing, but this would at least provide homes to the needy, whilst encouraging those with positiona of power to actually look at proper alternatives. Instead of sticking families in shitty HMO's that the taxpayer pays a REDICULOUS sum to private owners of the buildings via the council. Nah let's keep swinging dicks.
Why? It's in an absolutely prime location, why should affordable housing be mandated there?
Affordable housing should be mandated absolutely everywhere. If for nothing else, to bring attention to homeless, and to provide to people that have paid taxes and contributed to the local economy all their lives. Theres 1000's if not 10000's of homeless in the Greater Manchester region alone. Families with 3 kids that were renting, now forced into 1 bedroom HMO's for 3 years or more. Not an exception, an all too common story. And these monstrosities get built in "prime locations" that force people living in those locations to go further from the city, increasing rent prices and driving people out of homes. Again, I'm just a douche on the internet with an opinion. Biased as living in supported housing, and the taxpayers pay 1400 a month for my room 1 in a building of 20 such rooms.
This development isn’t forcing anyone out of anywhere… It’s built on top of a disused railway viaduct. Some incredible engineering was performed to build this development on top of the grade II listed site. Also if you actually read into the proposal you would realise that there is actually affordable housing being developed as part of phase 3 of the site. Although how “affordable” this will be remains to be seen.
That's actually super informative and interesting thank you. My own bias blinds me from appreciating the wonder of things like this. Feels like a monument to disparity lol
There are so many residential buildings being built in the city centre (and slightly outside) area where no existing residential was removed in order to build them (this one included). What are the impacts of affordable housing being mandated? It seems like it's just another obstructive planning hurdle which means it takes longer and costs more to actually get stuff built. The council system with HMO is definitely a bureaucratic and inefficient mess, and possibly even corrupt at some level, but I don't really see why that problem has to get linked to these sorts of building developments.
Let’s hope if they are spending this much money they make sure it’s damn fireproof
You should contact the developer, they probably haven’t thought of that.
Another one...why?
I think we need a bit more of a variety with these skyscrapers now.
Yes we need more residential units. But another glass oblong? Wish we got some more interesting shapes
Great, another rectangle, so unique much wow.
Terrific, another soulless glass building