Is Northern Quarter losing its SOUL?
AS DEVELOPERS MOVE IN WE LOOK AT WHAT IS HAPPENING TO A CITY HEARTLAND
ITS network of red-brick garment warehouses, gently faded facades and higgedly-piggedly hidden gems has become one of Manchester’s greatest assets.
The Northern Quarter has transformed itself, within a relatively short space of time, into an institution.
Since the area’s scruffier, edgier days in the 1980s and 1990s, when - despite some pockets of creativity - council bosses were desperate to attract investment to its rough-and-ready landscape, money has poured in and the district has blossomed.
But that has now brought with it the opposite concern.
There is now such a flood of financial interest in the Northern Quarter that some, including within the town hall, fear property speculation is chipping away at its soul.
While those in favour of redevelopment argue that change keeps places alive, others fear the area’s essence could be destroyed, particularly as old buildings are left to wither and die - before being sold on at huge profits and demolished.
As a result, recent times have been punctuated with planning rows.
Last summer the demolition of a decrepit 18th Century row in the middle of Thomas Street - for new flats - was agreed by planning officers. The proposal never went before councillors, so the first thing most people knew of the building’s redevelopment was its disappearance. But since then, social media has been alive with debate about the implications.
Tenants in the dilapidated block next door, which currently houses the Al-Faisal rice-andthree and the chocolatiers Bonbon, are now being moved out ahead of another potential demolition.
The start of 2018 has also marked the latest instalment in the Back Turner Street apart-hotel saga, a controversy that has - somewhat unusually - seen councillors on the brink of rejecting a development strongly supported by the town hall’s planning and regeneration departments.
That would see another long-derelict building, a warehouse on Soap Street, torn down after standing empty for years.
The emerging trend has sparked bitter debate, while other Northern Quarter planning controversies, such as the loss of the Big Horn sculpture on Tib Street to make way for new apartments, have only added to the anxiety.
Local DJ Pasta Paul, who used to live behind the now-demolished block on Thomas Street and now lives off Tib Street, believes the ‘whole character’ of the Northern Quarter is going to change.
“It’s just going to look like any other part of the country,” he says.
“And it’s a shame. I was doing some clearing out the other day and found a book from English Heritage from about 2007, in collaboration with the council, and it’s all about the Northern Quarter.
“It’s like they are advertising the fact they wanted to preserve it, back when it was up and coming.
“‘Up and coming’ was written on everything advertising it.
“Now they’ve made it the area that people want to come to and they are tearing down the bits that make it unique.
“What’s the point in making it a conservation area if they are not going to prevent buildings from being knocked down? It defeats the object.”
Members of the Northern Quarter Forum, a residents’ group set up two years ago, cast their minds back further. Of particular concern has been the trend for demolition on the back of neglect.
They point to the town hall’s 2003 Northern Quarter strategy, drawn up by consultants Regeneris, Drivers Jonas and Taylor Young, which warned a key challenge in its regeneration would be ‘addressing the problems caused by an aboveaverage level of absentee landlords and the tendency for many landowners to sit on property in the expectation that values will increase.’
“Meantime many of these properties are falling into disrepair,” it added.