Ex-City footballer refused consent for Manchester penthouse pool
Aymeric Laporte, who currently plays for Al-Nassr in Saudi Arabia, has had plans for a private amenity area on the roof of Axis Tower rejected by the city council.
Spanish international Laporte owns the penthouse in Axis Tower on Whitworth Street West and applied for planning permission last year to use vacant space on the roof of the 28-storey building as an extension of his Manchester home.
The £1.15m plans, designed by A-cero with advice from Fairhursts Design Group, included a seating area with a bar, as well as a pool and a gym.
Manchester City Council has now determined the application and decided it is a non-starter.
A decision notice handed down by the authority’s planning team states that the proposal amounts to an “incongruous and poor quality feature on the roof of this highly prominent tall building within the city centre of Manchester”.
In addition, the planners said the amenity area would “fail to respond to the architectural language and character of the building, be visible from key vantage points”, including Beetham Tower.
Documents lodged with the application suggest that Laporte had been trying to get the project off the ground for some time and that a “dispute arose” between him and developer Property Alliance Group, which said it was “not feasible”.
Mosaic Planning and law firm Mills & Co advised Laporte on the application. Learn more about the scheme by searching for reference number 137367/FO/2023 on Manchester City Council’s planning portal.
Good. Refused for all the right reasons
By Steve
‘… be visible from key vantage points”, including Beetham Tower.’
Will monitor the comments section here to see if the usual NIMBY attacks used so often on developments in Hulme and Ardwick are used on this one. A quick look on Google Maps shows that the view from Beetham Tower or the Viadux developments is not currently one of an earthly paradise on top of Axis Tower!
By I AM Perplexed
I don’t see the problem, why can’t Manchester have nice things?
By Peter
I’d be interested to see Alliance’s reasons for saying it wasnt feasible, presumbaly the weight loading of tonnes of water on top of a structure not desinged for it? Which if correct, would make the scheme fall squarely into the bat-excreta mental category. Also, who wants to see Laporte mincing around in his speedos whilst quaffing on a Mai Tai in Cloud23?
By Lee
@peter, I’m sure the sole-user multimillionaire Manchester based football player has plenty of other nice things and will do just fine.
By Anonymous
An absolute ‘incongruous and poor quality feature’…
By Anon
Strange one this, assuming he owns the entire floor below and has the permission of the freeholder, why not allow him to convert the rooftop? It’s just an unused roof, why not get some use out of this? If you’re in the Beetham looking down, I’d rather look at a rooftop terrace than an unused roof. Truthfully I think all new build towers should come with rooftop amenities to make use the space! This decision makes no sense to me at all.
By MC
Oh yeah cause that building is such an architectural marvel… pool would really ruin that state of the art roof
By Mike
He must think its Dubai
By IMLH
Dubai OMG LOL
By Anonymous
The view of a miisculel part of one of Manchester`s rooftops from Beetham Tower is surely not substantial grounds for refusal?
That aside, is this really newsworthy?
The shocking, incongruous scheme on a huge scale originally fronted by Neville and Giggs on the former police station site was rightly big news whereas this piece is just irrelevant gossip.
By TowerwithaView
Peter – having a private bar and pool on a roof – aren’t “nice things”.
By Anonymous
This is one of the worst planning decisions I have ever seen. Reading the Officer Report is almost like parody. The majority of the proposed structures would sit below the existing parapet of the roof so wouldn’t be visible from anywhere – how they result in an “incongruous and poor quality feature on the roof” is beyond me. How it could also adversely impact the amenity of someone looking down on it from Beetham Tower is also laughable. Seems like an easy win at appeal for Mr Laporte.
By Anonymous