PAG confirms plans for 55 Portland Street hotel

Property Alliance Group has confirmed its intention demolish the office at 55 Portland Street and replace it with a 17-storey hotel by submitting a full planning application for the project, as first revealed by Place North West last year.

The new hotel, to be operated by Irish firm Dalata Hotel Group, will include 329 bedrooms, and a restaurant at ground floor and mezzanine level. There are no plans to include any parking as part of the hotel development. Russells Construction has been named as the contractor.

Designed by Stephenson Studio, the building’s largest frontage will be along Sackville Street, while parts of the hotel will also face Major Street.

The hotel will be operated under Dalata’s four-star Clayton brand. The firm primarily operates hotels in Ireland, but has sites at Manchester Airport, Cardiff, Leeds, and London.

The original office block will be demolished to make way for the new hotel, and the demolition is being brought forward through a separate planning application.

The plans represent a departure from the original proposals for the site, which were to refurbish and extend the existing office block to create 110,000 sq ft of office space, alongside 6,200 sq ft of retail at ground floor level.

The application, granted in February 2016, also included proposals to build a 14-storey hotel on the neighbouring plot.

The adjacent hotel, which includes 183 beds, a casino, and restaurant, is already under construction with contractor Marshalls starting work on the scheme last year. This will be operated by Bespoke Hotels.

Alongside Stephenson Studio, the professional team also includes How as planner.

Andy Lavin, development director at Alliance, said: This scheme has been developed to meet the huge demand for hotels in Manchester city centre. Investment across the city is rising and that’s also reflected in our 3 St Peter’s Square development, which will comprise two hotel operators within the same building. The development at 55 Portland Street is ideally positioned for a new hotel, providing easy access to Piccadilly, the Northern Quarter and Oxford Road.”

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Boring for such a prominent site.

By Elephant

Could it not interact a bit more with Portland Street? Blank wall?

By Schwyz

Those windows look like they will allow so much light into the rooms and they really engage with the street design.

By Let there be light.

Tiny windows! Going to be so dark on one of the cloudy days in Manchester.

By Aaron

Another bland embarrassment for Manchester. Aren’t we lucky?

By Ham Shank

This is a terrible design making the Clayton Hotel group look like they’re on a par or below Travelodge. I can’t understand why the middle section is such a mess of exposed concrete and lacking window space beyond it being very very cheap and looking so. It’s such a prominent site and so important that a better lighter design is used than this brutalist embarrassement that looks like something they’d be knocking down in Middlesbrough or Wolverhampton rather than planning on building in position A in a major city like Manchester.

By Ben Saunders

Saunders – Here’s a thought: maybe Manchester isn’t such a “major” city after all? Maybe it is, indeed, in the same league as Middlesborough or Wolverhampton. Admittedly, a bit higher up that league, but its really nothing special. Am I the only one who looks up when walking around… this sort of design is pretty typical for the city centre. Its not a world city!!!

By Town Planner

Lord Jim O’Neil said recently about the new East/West divide in England and the North West’s remarkable economic renaissance contributing massively to this. What he meant Town Planner was Manchester’s. The title ‘World city’ applies to only three cities on this planet. London,Tokyo and New York.So of course Manchester is not a world city in that respect but it is certainly streets ahead of everywhere else in this country outside the capital.

By Elephant

From an aesthetical city landscape point of view, this should fit Manchester fine. Any City with ambitions to be big and “brutal” should embrace all types of architecture good or bad it says we are big we are open-minded etc, we have diversity, we don’t worry about things like this, otherwise, the moaning can seem parochial and small City syndrome.

By Rosie York

Is Manchester streets ahead of anywhere else at tackling poverty and deprivation?

By Nordyne

how dull…

By QuaysMan

More Croydon than Chicago. This is beyond bad for such a prominent site on one of the city’s major streets. Back to the drawing board please PAG.

By Horrified

Terrible architecture..drab miserable pure crapness

By Al

Terrible architecture..

By Al

Will need knocking down in 5 years. Design by spreadsheet.

By Tom

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