Manchester set to approve Renaker’s £1bn skyscraper plan next week 

A truly abysmal scheme. Whilst Great Jackson has (to date) had some superb towers constructed (namely Elizabeth Tower and Three60) and the promising twin tower Contour towers, these are just absolutely atrocious. More checkerboard glazing on the skyline, more copy & paste blocks with no variety or context.

The 4 blocks have absolutely no merit to them at all, all that is being created is merely a glossier version of the tenement blocks you’d see on the outskirts of Hong Kong.

The only ambition is in the bed count unfortunately.

Terrible scheme. Never before has a development so large also been so incredibly boring. Renaker and SH have lost my admiration here – five excruciatingly boring towers with zero imagination and very little to like at ground level either. To hear that there’s no affordable housing yet again when other developers are managing to provide it on other sites is totally unacceptable from Renaker IMO.

Please find me a theory of urban design which agrees this is a good way of building a city.

NO affordable or social housing, not 1 home, a complete scandal, render it unaffordable? A lie, MCC should be ashamed of this

Good news. Manchester for all its progress has still far to many plots of land that are being massively under utilised

No no no! Please make the centre piece tower 300m+ and the others all 150m+. They should all be different heights as well to create a pyramid looking skyline as you look north/south.

No affordable homes. Renaker, you are a disgrace, as is manchester council.

The checkerboard design is very average at best. Ideally they should have a more interesting top end/crown for the building as it really doesn’t inspire bar the height. Still it won’t be the tallest building for long so perhaps they’ve given up on making it iconic.

Wouldn’t some architectural flare, balconies and different colours off glass just make this lovely?… never seen such a boring skyline in my life besides cut and copy buildings in China.

Massively exciting to see Deansgate South topped. Simply staggering to see the transformation of what was waste-ground & industrial units only a few years ago. The only way is up!

Looks absolutely awful, cheap and tacky. The chequered cladding is so, so poor and the council really should be putting more pressure on developers to build something a little more timeless.

In addition, the 4 other towers are so lacking it’s quite unbelievable that any architect is willing to put their name to it. They are the slums of the future.

Not enough variety of material, cheap and tacky designs, no crowns or definitive features. Just so poor on every level.

Tall is the only redeeming feature but it’s notike Manchester needs to sign off on anything these days, we can and should aspire for better.

Let’s hope they think out the box with a different design for these tower. It like looking at the same tower.

But who is going to live in them?

It’s very imposing. It should look better. It’s the most simple and uninspiring of all the neighbours. I know it’s subjective but I think most people will think it’s rather ugly. The blade it’s probably the most interesting of all. Simpson H proposed a Tower called Lumiere for Leeds years ago. Why not something like that? That one most people would agree looks better, for example.

Build, baby, build!

I think it’s outrageous. Saying that they are unaffordable. What there saying,they want only elite people moving in. What about the local people in the local community. What about there needs for affordable apartments. It’s a money making cow.

Need affordable homes!!!!!!!

Need homes odinary people can afford.

Very attractive to the eye; a great view of the city.

Manchester City Council should be ashamed of themselves. Pedestrians can’t walk down Chester Road without getting soaked from cars travelling through standing water because the Highway drainage doesn’t work – but guess what they won’t levy a Section 106 to help pay for the improvements. Let the Developers continue to make Profit on “unviable schemes” with no significant input into the wider community. Let’s face it a token 100 space Primary School and limited Doctors Surgery does not correlate with 7,000 new homes.

Boring – and unsustainable.

The absence of affordable homes should be unacceptable under a Labour government – so where is Rayner?

While the Skyline view is impressive, SimpsonHaugh and the planners at MCC could do with reviewing the basics of Urban Design at street level. At street level we could have had podium bases to these towers with active uses looking outwards. That would have been an extension to the City Centre urban form with new, lively, animated streets. Instead we have odd shaped, windswept public spaces with towers soaring from the human view on the ground. How many visitors will walk here, drawn by the towers and find a sterile, empty district at street level?

Can one of the posters demanding affordable units answer me the really obvious question(s)………a number of apartments get offered at 50% of the market rate, Will those new residents now be able to afford the £3,900 per annum service charge? Should they be subsidised by the residents that paid full price? Do you exclude the “affordable” units from use of pool, gym and other facilities?

Yes we need affordable homes but you’re just not going to get them inclusive of pools and tennis courts.

Yet more expensive properties to be bought by mega wealthy Chinese with absolutely no connection to the city so they can charge outrageous prices and become even wealthier. In the meantime ordinary Mancunians are looking for affordable homes. This is a vanity project for Manchester City Council.

Manchester needs more decent housing, people have to move to Cheshire to live somewhere a family can live, North Leeds has nice streets, why don’t we?

One must assume MCC have learnt from past mistakes and insisted a overage to capture the millions of profits renaker are likely to make when the scheme is sold at the actual price and not the hypothetical pricing they have suggested to the Council.

that is a good usage of the leftover brownfield and improvement for Manchester

For a while I was part of that Liverpool crowd from the paved end of the M62 who admired Manchester’s bravura in going tall. Now, however, the sameness of much of what is being delivered is looking less like smart civic management and more like a big mistake. This latest scheme hardly sets the heart a-flutter, either.

This is NOT architecture! Why are SH happy to submit the same ‘design’ for every building? There is no affordable housing, balconies, or public realm. The four towers resemble high-density Hong Kong blocks (not a good thing).

@By More Anonymous than the others

I think you’re right. Liverpool has a unique identity and charm and should celebrate its difference more. Those craving spreadsheet architecture on the Mersey, be careful what you wish for.

You love to see it!!!

Ignore the persistently sad and negative people of this world or you may just become one of them. Renaker are not the local council or a housing association, who’s job it is to provide affordable housing.
Get them built!!!

I love the ambition and big city thinking, which a lot of UK cities have forgotten. Great use of brownfield land, and the density is right. I think the mistake Renaker are making is the use of chequerboard cladding, its had its time and we need something different and classy. The Lighthouse Tower has it right, but only at the very top, so why not carry that on through the whole tower and then add a better crown. Also the tower should push a little higher to get it up the European rankings. Renaker also need to be very careful that this site isn’t rammed with towers, as the only views people will have is in to each others apartments, which would be a great shame. The lack of provision for affordable/Social housing is always contentious and only highlights the lack of new homes being provided by housing associations and councils.

Disgraceful. Yet again no affordable housing. Social housing is desperately needed. Only the developers profit from this.
Too much emphasis on the city centre yet again.

The roads around 5 new slyscrapers are just not sufficient to handle the amount of further traffic this will now generate!
Make Renaker widen the roads around the sites, namely Mancunian Way and the new silly useless junction with Princess Road. Widen both east and westbound links.

The scale and height of these towers are great but you’ll struggle to find a kind word about the look of this scheme.

I’m sick to death of the checkerboard, random cladding rubbish from SH. It’s monotonous and we deserve better architecture.

@August 21, 2024 at 8:35 am
By Anonymous

Interesting you mentioned Leeds. The Yorkshire city has a genuinely diverse economy, is on a roll, and has a mix of housing types. And the South Bank project is great placemaking to name but a few.
Now it just needs that tram system.

The buildings that form “The Green” are totally uninspiring and should be deemed unacceptable by the council. We’re going to live with them for possibly hundreds of years. It’s worth the time to get it right. Reduce the height of some, increase the height of others. Variation in height is just as lacking as variation in design.

I have not read the Planning applications and the background papers for this new phase of development at Great Jackson Street.
However, Renaker on the first phases of development in and around Great Jackson Street “avoided” any affordable housing contributions by delivering a new school, medical facilities and a public park (?).
In this new phase of development the Council should have been more forceful with Renaker and secured an off-site affordable housing contribution up front irrespective of what the viability assessment stated. The result of not doing this is that the optics for the Council look shocking.

These towers will look magnificent, and if they were being built in Liverpool, they would be having street parties. Manc bashing, is now a career for some on here. Who cares. Read Bloomberg’s recent assessment of Manchester’s progress, if you want to see how the city is now viewed from afar. ARM has just increased their office space in the St Michael’s project announced yesterday, everybody wants to be in booming Manchester.

Lack of parking doesn’t mean people won’t have cars, they’ll find somewhere to park in town.

To the Elephant in the room, it is not ‘bashing’ the city to oppose the appearance of this project and the rapturous applause akin to a group of circus seals for anything and everything of height in the Manchester / Salford region is very tiring by this point.

The lack of affordable housing (and S106 contributions in general) and architectural style is disgraceful. The application should be rejected.

Looks great, real benefit to the city, get it built.

It does seem MCC has become even more timid in terms of what it demands from developments like this, just when it is in a position to demand more.
Weak political leadership – Sir Howard and Sir Richard sometimes got a bad press over not making developers meet affordable housing and other requirements, but they could make them do stuff when they wanted to.
Really needs the new Labour government to get active on this, tighten up the rules so they aren’t as easy to get round, make it clear to councils what they need to be asking for, and generally ensure a level playing field for all developers to put an end to suggestions of favouritism.

Bit cookie cutter innit?

Anonymous at 10.56. Of course it is Manc bashing. The classic British attitude, to success. If these were built near the Liver building, they’d be, the best thing since York Minster, to some on here. If you want to know why this country lags behind its peers, read some of the comments on here.

Siri, show me what ‘jumping the shark’ looks like in an urban development context.

@Elephant

Not clapping when I had to wait 14 hours in MRI recently to be seen as it was full to the brim, We have one walk in center for the entire city centre away from the hospital and no plans to add more even with this influx of thousands of more people.

How many debt ridden teenage influencers can one city house?

The affordable housing issue is totally transparent in Manchester. All of the evidence is readily available and is independently scrutinised. If you can drive a coach and horses through then you should do so but I suspect you won’t be able to. You should ask yourself the obvious question……why wouldn’t MCC want affordable housing if a scheme could genuinely support it? Have MCC ever given the impression that they don’t want affordable housing? If you don’t like the design you are entitled to that opinion. But this is not cheap and tacky. Look at the cost plan……..no other regional city would get anywhere near those build costs.

Calling this out isn’t “Manc bashing” or anything of the sort. If this was proposed for Liverpool, it would be a very good thing if sited correctly, and would be better quality than they normally get.
However, Manchester is now in a position to expect better, and should be confident in ensuring new stuff on this scale meets actual local needs and not just those of investors.
Over-speccing new builds like these with lounges, pools and other stuff of interest to the influencer crowd and Air BnB speculators bri gs a better return for the developer, but shouldn’t be a way of skewing the figures to avoid affordable housing requirements.
And this is before them laughing at us with the £2.5 million Engles penthouse in the previous tower, and the definitely-not-a-subsidy from GMCA.

If all of this is transparent -how much profit do Renaker stand to make out of this (unviable) development ? The Viability Study argument has given a green light for developers like Renaker to ride roughshod over housing policy -building units for ‘the world market’ taller and taller, rather than the homes which the population of Manchester desperately needs. If Manchester needs social housing then developers like Renaker should be tasked with developing it -which would mean a complete valuation re-adjustment by landowners, and developers adhering to housing policy and building (probably low rise) developments providing a mix of housing providing a profit for developers risk.
The City Council is making a vanity choice to be a bedfellow in all of this to see its sparky towers at the top of the provincial city league table. And in the process selling out the citizens of Manchester for private sector profit.

Elephant, nobody is being anti-development, they’re simply (and rightfully) annoyed with what has been designed. Also if you merely merit success on how many apartment units are advertised overseas then perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate your parameters..

Boo to the naysaying cluster busters, get them built!

Renaker and the council turning this area into a collection of communist China/Russia tower blocks. Zero imagination and same old boring copy and paste design. Why not try something different and raise the bar to what has already been built

Manchester is 99% affordable housing, Hulme is affordable housing, the whole of North Manchester, it’s only Didsbury that isn’t and even there there is some, people don’t seem to realise this

Please Please Please a change of style and colour! Starting to look like a mass housing scheme done by the “City Architects Office”!!!

Read the FVA submitted by Renaker in support of the application. no mention of the ACTUAL finance rates paid by Renaker only an ASSUMED 8%. It looks like Renaker Build takes the profit while the ‘developer SPV’ pleads poverty.

People really need to contact councillors and object to this and raise concerns, this is terrible

Excellent news and looking forward for this development to go ahead.

Anonymous 1.58……..it’s in the papers!!!! This really isn’t difficult……..transparent means transparent……….or just bleat

@August 21, 2024 at 2:31 pm
By Anonymous

They do realise that this statement is trying-to-be-a-smart-Alec tosh. Please don’t make a fool of yourself.

Ludicrous. No extra infrastructure or parking for all these people????

Good news, but can we have something in this scheme that’s just a bit more interesting than low effort block architecture? The Beetham Tower, Three60 and No1 Deansgate (for example) are statement pieces, none of this really is…

Same old same boring drab square blocks that any LEGO fan can build for goodness sake have some imagination but then again it’s the grey gold build it quick & quicker even tho they pay there construction staff peanut via a scam PAYE scheme even tho it’s still cis self employed with no employment rights what so ever and if your face doesn’t fit or god for bid you stand up to management it’s tatty bye on the Thursday chop chop day
It’s doesn’t surprise me yet again no affordable units that’s far beyond renaker grand master plan we can’t have common people living in these prestigious boring square blocks
They will all be white smoke in around 10-15 yrs when the world bankrupt its self wait and see

Lacks ambition. All towers need be megatall, meaning+600m, none are even considered super tall meaning +300m. If Manchester wishes be considered a Global Alpha++ city it needs prove itself with ambition. Affordable housing is for third world countries not for the 6th largest economy in the world. Does Singapore or Dubai build affordable housing, no, because they wish attract the super rich centribillionaires and be HQ to trillion dollars companies.

PNW needs to grow up and stop blocking the comments from people who dislike Simpson & Haugh it’s really disgraceful

Even though i’m thoroughly tired of the chequered look, I’m glad these towers are going to be built in Manchester rather than elsewhere …
Would really like Renaker to try something new like a scheme with a pyramid shaped roof or different cladding, something like the Mercury tower in Moscow …

Manchester had a great history one could see and be around. Post ira bomb things started to change well. Now , tall boring glass plastic coveralls.
Posh slums!

Do we have any figures to show what percentage of Renaker high rise Manchester apartments are owned directly or indirectly by Chinese investors ?

Average Household size 2.3 – reasonable to assume that 5000 additional inhabitants, a significant number of may want to have children. Putting aside the affordable housing debate the pressure for additional public services as a result of this new population must require the Council to seek contributions from the developer. The existing school and GP services will not be sufficient. Poor show Renaker and the City Council – place making at its worst.

Bland!

What are people wittering about. Great Jackson st was always zoned for talls and has been for years.. there’s loads there already and now there will be some more …and no , it was never meant for ‘affordable ’ housing. If you are naive enough to think that this part of the city centre is for such housing you know very little about the reality of how development works.

Brilliant, thank you Renaker, great vision.

CAN WE HAVE AN ICONIC TOWER PLEASE??? THEY ALL LOOK LIKE 1970’S LEGO!!!!

Never seen the appeal of living in a box a 100 feet up that costs more per month than a 4 bed house.

Feels like we’re trying to imitate American culture more and more. I’m not against progression, but wow some originality could have been introduced, spinningfields for example, literally looks like a wall of grey distopian landscape now and I think the architects have used the cheeky trick of the ‘copy and paste image in adobe, smashed it guys!

Well this is going down very well in the comments and I can’t help but agree. Boring unimaginative and risk averse design. How MCC can approve this is beyond me whist other developers are being held to different standards elsewhere in the city. Seems to be an utter cash cow this for the Architect and developers and Planning consultants.

These towers are tall. That’s where the positives end. The design is exceptionally bland and does not have anything that makes it stand out from the other blocks. These are facts whether they were built in Manchester, Liverpool or Benidorm. To label this opinion manc bashing suggests a very fragile ego I’m afraid. The more boring the design the more profit for Renaker I guess.

Ooh talls do get people very threatened for some reason. Great to see all the excitables , really lights up the comments ! They’re going to go apoplectic when they build that 240m one across the way on Regent rd . Great job Manchester keep em coming…but also do one with a pointy top…that’s quite important 😅

These tall bland building are making Manchester even more dismal in the rain, a bit more style and colour please.

These will look great when built and has been mentioned this area was always meant for talls. As it progresses can we have a super tall now? A different architect with the vision to stack one on top of the other and make it look like the Chrysler building. Or just buy the Chrysler building. I’ll be honest I’m reaching a bit here.

I would imagine that the owner occupiers and office workers working in the new buildings will be car owners so are parking spaces incorporated into the developments or will they have to try and park their vehicles on the surrounding streets and roads .
Once again foul waste disposal will impact on the already over capacity sewerage systems and cause even more pollution to rivers in central manchester.
On the positive side though when fully occupied the properties will generate a lot of domestic and commercial rates tax for the local authority.
On the negative point though low paid workers or the unemployed will not be able to afford to live there.

Wow, development continues at such pace in Manchester. No where in the UK quite like it at the moment. I wish we had one or two where I live but alas probably never to be…..

‘But who is going to live in them’…lots of young affluent people who work for all of the many companies who have relocated or opened in Manchester in the past few years I guess 😎

In response to City Centre. I agree about the lack of facilities, and that is the responsibility of the government, and Andy Burnham. In response to Elephant Gun(I hope you are not loaded by the way) That name made me laugh. My fragile ego still thinks that there is just a hint of jealousy at Manchester’s continued success. I agree with the comment from one of the anonymouses, about improving the designs, perhaps something like the Transamerica Pyramid, in San Francisco, or something less boxy.

Agreed, a few more designs such as setbacks as in the Victoria tower ( was this a Simpson-Haugh design?) and also cladding variation…also as in the Victoria would be nice. Can’t really complain about the height if one is 71 storeys other than to say it should be taller as there is an even bigger one already planned over the rd so why settle for second best.

Tall is ok if they show architectural merit – this new proposal is simply boring and doesn’t enhance Manchester’s skyscraper district. MCC should have the goolies to reject it all and tell Renaker to come up with something beautiful and aesthetically pleasing.

Build a pointy top witches hat one please. Ros & Co should be pushing for better designs here than the checkerboard… And ground floor activation is critical to make this a more active and walkable city. We are early in Manchesters growth, don’t sell it short

I think the wind issues around here are proof that Manchester should not be building skyscrapers

These towers draw so much attention, all this debate about design or how tall it should be, frankly it won’t make much of a difference. Its an infill site sandwiched between inner ring roads besides other tallish blocks which collectively provide many bedspaces but that’s pretty much it. Walking around you notice how dead, ugly and faceless the place is and I know its isn’t complete but you can imagine how it will feel. Great financial investment, Not great place-making.

For wind issues take alka seltzer. In the meantime leave the designing to the experts. This is excellent 👌

Place making comes at the ground level, when the tall bits are made and districts are created. That’s the bit takes time and work. Lots more of these to come according to the plans for the area. A little more design variation and continue to link them to the ground by creating communities ..that’s the way to go.

Yeah agree with the last comment. Renaker and the people who obsess about tall buildings really should focus on placemaking ie what’s on the ground, the shops, services, open spaces, amenities, street life. That’s much more important for the city.

Any criticism of Simpson H on this site is immediately sanctioned.

I’m sorry, but have you read this comment section?

August 23, 2024 at 4:11 pm

By Julia Hatmaker

Simpson H is a disaster for Manchester. We need architects such as David Chipperfield or Norman Foster. We are all tired of his checkerboard cladding. More variety creativity more well designed social housing. Manchester needs to grow outwards not upwards.

And where would it grow outwards John?

The checkerboard pattern is awful.

Why is there numerous comments about affordable housing, I’ve lived under a Manchester postcode all my life and can’t afford a central Manchester apartment, so I bought outside the city centre inline with my budget, at the end of the day these apartments are replacing areas of land which are an eyesore which can only be an improvement?

Seeing that the site si bounded by a freeway it seems there is no other option but to build upward Anonymous. I am not against tall buildings, but to pull off a coup of this importance requires an architect of real talent and I argue that Simpson does not have that talent. I do Believe that for both Manchester and Salford the way is out rather than up. Londoner’s are starting to regret the Shard and the Talkywalky. Basically it’s his designs I find deeply problematic a sentiment shared by many on this site it would appear. Manchester risks being stuck with ugly towers for the next 40 years many of which will look outdated in less than 5.

It infuriates me that people expect a private sector developer to provide affordable housing, amenities or any other free or subsidized stuff on their private land. If you can’t afford a place of your own, how about upskilling so you can earn more money to buy one or protest your local MP because there are no decent jobs anymore as we have no manufacturing industry. How dumb have Brits become?

Simpson has been designing the same old glass fag packets for the past 2 decades. Architecturally it’s boring beyond believe but it’s the most efficient form of design unfortunately driven by cost.

Glad there’s height as that’s been massively underutilised (by cost constraints and lack of foresight from the planning department).

I’d love to see better building form but it’s never going to happen when profit is the end game.

That is hilarious anon 9.48…….the city has been transformed beyond recognition over the past 30 years but the planning department lacks foresight!!!

Simpson’s lighthouse checkerboard cladding needs a re-design

A few observations from the threads:
– didn’t Renaker just report a razor thin profit after it had to absorb construction cost inflation, but you’d think from the comments here they were price gouging
– Angela Rayner just removed ‘beautiful’ from the nation planning framework, but it looks lots of people here wanted re-introduce aesthetics to make it the process to make it more not less discretionary
– MCC owns land outside the city centre, and it should take s106 to build affordable there, not in the core. that’s more cost effective use of resources

@Rich X

Whilst it’s true that references to beauty have been removed from the proposed new NPPF, the crux of the policy remains as per quote from piece by Nicholas Boys Smith:

‘.. Although some additional references to ‘beauty’ have been dropped, leading to some concern before the report’s release, those that followed our Commission report remain.

As the Government’s consultation paper put it yesterday, they “recognise the importance of beauty in the built environment as an important objective of well-designed places.”

These buildings are extremely bland. There is next to nothing about them that makes them special. The layout of it looks terrible, the facade design is also terrible. We need some new architecture firms in.