HBD unveils ‘future-facing’, £140m Manchester office
“Colloco is a completely different prospect to the sterile and corporate offices of yesteryear,” said executive director Adam Brady about the project.
A public consultation is due imminently on developer HBD’s prospective office block, which would be nestled on the border of the districts of Spinningfields and St John’s.
Designed by EPR Architects, Colloco would comprise 200,000 sq ft of office space on the corner of New Quay Street and Gartside Street. The 16-storey office block has been designed to achieve a BREEAM Excellent rating, 5.5-star NABERS score, and to be net zero carbon.
The office block would be filled with flexible workspace, a roof pavilion that provides areas for events, and a garden terrace. To encourage active travel, Colloco would also have e-bike charge points, cycle storage, and showers for occupiers to use.
Adam Brady, executive director at HBD, described Colloco as “a future-facing workspace solution in the post-Covid era”.
He added: “We wanted to create a building that provides a positive impact to Manchester’s thriving community but one which also meets the needs of a modern and progressive work culture.”
In addition to EPR Architects, the project team for Colloco includes Arcadis, Ramboll, Asteer Planning, Hoare Lea, and Curtins.
HBD put the gross development value of Colloco at £140m and estimated that it would create 850 jobs a year during its construction phase.
The recipe for Colloco has been cooking since HBD acquired the site in 2020 from LTE Group, whose Manchester College had a campus there. Back then, Brady teased that the future office block would “rip up the rulebook on how an office building should look, behave, and function.”
Keeping HBD occupied as Colloco gears up for consultation is Island – another HBD office development in Manchester that is nearly halfway complete.
The 100,000 sq ft Island, like Colloco, is targeting top sustainability credentials, including a 5.5-star NABERS score. So far only English Cities Fund’s Eden in Salford has managed to net that rating.
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