Car park next in line for wrecking ball at Bruntwood SciTech’s Sister
The Charles Street multi-storey car park is to be knocked down as part of the developer’s efforts to ready the former UMIST campus for its transformation into a 4m sq ft innovation district.
Bruntwood SciTech has asked Manchester City Council for permission to demolish the car park, which has been closed since last year, to pave the way for residential buildings.
According to a planning statement by consultant Deloitte, the car park “is no longer fit for purpose and therefore has reached the end of its economic life”. The ground floor commercial units, which previously housed a café, bar, and shop, have all closed.
The site is located on plot H of the Sister masterplan. Once the car park is demolished, a 1.2-acre site will be left for future development into “bespoke forms of residential accommodation and PBSA”, according to the strategic regeneration framework for the area.
A spokesperson for Sister said: “We can confirm that a planning application has been submitted to Manchester City Council seeking permission to demolish the Charles Street car park and associated vacant commercial units. The demolition works will allow us to prepare the site for future development as part of the transformation of Sister into a world-class destination for research, collaboration and enterprise in the heart of Manchester. This application does not include any proposals for new buildings at this stage.
“While a series of technical assessments have already been carried out to consider potential impacts of the demolition on local residents and businesses – including noise, air quality and traffic – if the application is approved, a more detailed Demolition Management Plan will be implemented and distributed locally to ensure these works are carefully managed and any disruption is minimised.”
The car park is not the only building within the £1.7bn masterplan area that is earmarked for destruction.
As part of the first phase of Sister, which will see 500,000 sq ft of workspace delivered across two buildings, several parts of the former UMIST campus will be knocked down.
These include the Barnes Wallis and Wright Robinson Building, Manchester Meeting Place, Morton Laboratory and Moffat Building, and the Butterfly Stairs to pave the way for 585,000 sq ft of new office space.
In addition, plans to partially encapsulate the grade two-listed Hollaway Wall inside one of the office buildings have divided opinion.
Outside of the masterplan area but part of the former UMIST campus, the Faraday Tower, a former teaching building that has been vacant since 2017, is also in line for demolition.
