Road plan will ruin us...
PLANS to redevelop a busy junction outside the Arndale Centre and make it a ‘gateway’ to the Northern Quarter would ‘destroy’ the character of the area, according to market stall traders on the site.
Developers Commercial Estates Group want to knock down the largelyvacant Brutalist building on the corner of High Street and Church Street and replace it with a 22-storey residential tower.
But it would mean that the remaining stalls at the bottom of the building – which include an independent bookseller and Northern Soul Grilled Cheese – would have to relocate.
The developers have also applied for permission to revamp the ground and first floor of the NCP car park – 70 metres along from their current spot – to accommodate the sellers.
But some traders fear they won’t be properly incorporated into the new building and worry what will happen to them.
Eddie Hopkinson, who works at the second-hand bookshop, Manchester Book Buyers, said: “We’re the last street vendors but we’re being displaced. We won’t be incorporated into the new development. The character is being destroyed.” Mark McCall, 54, who has worked at McCall’s greengrocers since he was 12, said: “We’re part of the character of the Northern Quarter.
“There’s a lot of supporters who don’t want us to go.” He’s concerned that there wouldn’t be enough space for his stock under the new plans.
The remaining stalls are some of the last long-standing independent traders in the city, he said. “We’re like the Alamo,” he added. A CGE spokesman said: “We offered to take measurements of the stalls so that we could revert to the traders with alternative solutions which would ensure they still had the same amount of space, or more if required.”