Luxury hotel coming to Manchester

Five-star brand W Hotels is close to agreeing a deal that will see it open at Gary Neville’s St Michael’s scheme, according to sources close to the project.

Part of Marriott Group, W Hotels is understood to be eyeing up the high-profile Manchester project to be the site of its third UK venue. 

The 191-bedroom hotel would be located within the 40-storey tower element of St Michael’s, which is to be delivered in partnership by Salboy and Gary Neville’s development company Relentless.  

This part of the scheme, designed by Hodder + Partners, would also feature around 180 apartments. 

Main contractor Bowmer + Kirkland began work on the first phase, which includes 185,000 sq ft of offices and a rooftop restaurant, last year. The first phase, which Relentless is delivering in partnership with KKR, is expected to complete in 2024. 

Should the deal complete, Manchester would join an illustrious list of cities that currently boast a W Hotel. 

These include New York, Los Angeles, Barcelona, Istanbul, Osaka, and Kuala Lumpur, among others. 

W’s Manchester hotel would come more than a decade after the brand launched its first UK site in London, located in Leicester Square. 

A W Hotel in Edinburgh is due to launch later this year. 

From the outset, the team behind St Michael’s has sought a five-star hotel operator for the scheme in order to address a lack of high-end hotel options in Manchester. 

“Very few established global cities have such limited supply of five-star hotel bed spaces and facilities,” according to a planning statement by Zerum. 

“Manchester is competing against other cities it is important to minimise perceived weaknesses in its offering.” 

Relentless and W Hotel declined to comment on the negotiations when approached by Place North West. 

W Hotel has been linked with Manchester before. 

In 2008, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, which became a subsidiary of Marriott in 2016, announced that W would be coming to Manchester in 2010. 

The proposed site was located on the corner of Whitworth Street and Princess Street and was owned by West Property at the time. 

However, the scheme did not progress and the plot was sold to Morgan Stanley in 2011 as part of the disposal of £216m of West’s owner Donal Mulryan’s assets by the Irish Government’s National Asset Management Agency. 

Urban & Civic acquired the site in 2014 and redeveloped it into a 351-apartment scheme.