Manchester Airport ramps up office offering as hotels get go-ahead

2 August 2018 06:00 Charlie Schouten Comments (0)

The first two buildings at Manchester Airport’s emerging hotel district will start early next year as planning applications for a further two office buildings look set to come forward.

The two hotels are a 280-bed, seven-floor Holiday Inn, and an Ibis Budget featuring 262 rooms over seven floors. A planning application for these two buildings was put forward by Manchester Airport Group, BCEGI and the Greater Manchester Pension Fund for consortium P1 Hotels in April, and has now been approved.

These are both likely to be delivered by contractor BCEGI in an £80m deal, and are set to star ton site between January and February this year. Site clearance, including demolition and remediation of the airport’s former petrol station, is already under way.

The project will be BCEGI’s first hotel scheme in the UK, and the two hotels are set to open by the start of 2021, bringing a combined 542 beds to the site.

A further two hotels – a Hilton Garden Inn and a Hampton By Hilton – are also being brought forward, providing 375 beds and 245 beds respectively. Both buildings have planning approval and are also likely to be delivered by 2021, again with BCEGI as the potential contractor.

Leach Rhodes Walker is the architect for the Hilton hotels, while the Ibis Budget and the Holiday Inn have been designed by ICA. 5plus, Aecom, and Planit IE are masterplanners for the Airport City site

In the Airport City masterplan, due to be delivered over the next 12 years, there are around 2,400 hotel beds to come forward, designed to support both domestic and international travellers and the business community as the airport grows its commercial offering.

The Hut Group has already signed up for 51,000 sq ft across two buildings at the site, as first revealed by Place North West in May this year, meaning that much of the existing office accommodation is full; as a result, Manchester Airport Group is now aiming to submit plans for two office buildings; one a pre-let and another speculatively developed.

These planning applications are expected in the coming months and are also likely to feature a multi-storey car park.

This forms part of a wider plan to deliver 1m sq ft of office space at the site. CBRE and JLL are the retained agents for Airport City.