Rochdale signals Middleton intent with plan to buy Warwick Mill

The council has signed an option agreement with the owner of the long-vacant former cotton mill in an effort to set a positive tone for the regeneration of the town. Developer Capital&Centric is in pole position to redevelop the grade two-listed asset into apartments.

Starting off strong

Sitting at the heart of the town’s 200-acre Mayoral Development Zone and built in 1907, Warwick Mill is set to be the first major project to come forward in the town’s planned regeneration following talks between the current owner – Hong Kong-based Kam Lei Fong – Rochdale Council, the town’s Mayoral Development Corporation, and the in-vogue developer.

Actor Steve Coogan, co-chair of the Middleton MDC, told Place North West the mill is an obvious place to start turning Middleton’s fortunes around.

“It happens to be a factory that is visible from almost every part of Middleton. It’s looming over it,” said Coogan, who grew up in Middleton.

“I think it was [Prime Minister] Andy [Burnham] who said ‘do that first’.”

At present, the massive red brick building on Oldham Road is in a sorry state. It ceased operations as a mill in the 1960s and has only been used sporadically since. Its many windows are either boarded up or smashed.

Rose Marley, co-chair of Middleton MDC and chief executive of Co-operatives UK, said Warwick Mill has become “symbolic of decay, post-industrialised distress, a lack of skills, [and] a lack of hope”.

Steve Coogan and Rose Marley have a clear vision for how the regeneration of Middleton should come forward. Credit: PNW

This view was backed up during a recent consultation. Of 2,000 respondents to a survey asking what changes they wanted to see in Middleton, more than 800 said that bringing Warwick Mill back into use should be a priority.

It stands to reason, then, that Coogan and Marley would choose the asset as the curtain-raiser for the town’s regeneration journey in a bid to show locals their views matter.

“It’s no good saying you’re doing things. You have to be seen to be doing them,” Coogan said.

The art of the deal

The option agreement gives the council exclusivity for a four-month period. The authority will use that time to conduct due diligence. As part of this process, developer Capital&Centric has been appointed to carry out feasibility studies, the council said.

Prior to opening talks to sell the building, Kam Lei Fong had secured planning approval in 2024 for the conversion of the building into 135 flats and the construction of a new-build block next door containing an additional 150.

Negotiations with Capital&Centric began in 2025 and the developer had already agreed a price for Warwick Mill when co-founder Tim Heatley was made aware of Rochdale’s interest in the site.

“Warwick had been on our radar for ages,” Heatley said. “Loads of people had told us we should buy it over the years. We’d get so many social media messages, introductions to various people claiming to represent the owners and plenty of ‘this has Capital&Centric written all over it’.”

Once Rochdale Council entered the fray and expressed its interest in buying the building, C&C agreed the best route forward would be for the local authority to own the asset and set about arranging the transition with Kam Lei Fong.

Many of the mill’s windows are smashed or boarded up. Credit: via Rochdale Council

“Through conversations with GMCA, Rochdale Council, and the MDC, we concluded that the smartest structure was for the public sector to acquire the mill, with Capital&Centric taking the developer role,” Heatley said.

“But ultimately, who owned the building on day one mattered far less than getting it bought and stopping another false dawn. We can work out the long-term funding and ownership structure. The priority was getting control of Warwick and giving it a genuine future.”

While the acquisition has not completed and no appointments have been made with regards to who might ultimately redevelopment the mill, Capital&Centric is already drafting plans for the site.

“The ambition isn’t simply to restore a beautiful old building,” Heatley said.

“Get it right and it can become a thriving hub at the heart of the town and help drag wider regeneration along with it. Now we just need to get it restored, repurposed and buzzing again in time for Andy Burnham to return as Prime Minister and cut the ribbon.”

Plans for the redevelopment of the mill have been approved once before. Credit: via planning documents

Convincing Coogan

In order to show Coogan and Marley what is possible as far as the conversion of abandoned mills go, Andy Burnham, who was then still Greater Manchester Mayor, asked Heatley to take the pair around Capital&Centric’s Weir Mill in Stockport, a project that involved the restoration of a long-vacant mill not dissimilar to Warwick Mill.

Coogan is sceptical of developers, saying that “build expensive houses and sell them to people with lots of money…tends to be the default developer’s modus operandi”.

He wants Middleton to be a “laboratory for some progressive innovative ideas” that do not result in gentrification and “the indigenous population being ethnically cleansed”.

In anticipation of the tour, Heatley asked comedian John Bishop – a friend of both his and Coogan’s – to put in a good word for him with the actor aimed at convincing the him that Capital&Centric can be trusted to deliver in a way that aligns with the MDC’s values.

“Rose and Steve came to Stockport while Weir Mill was still being restored,” Heatley said. “We spent a couple of hours wandering around talking about regeneration, social impact, property, television and our respective upbringings. Hopefully we demonstrated that not all developers are created equal.”

• Read more about Steve Coogan and Rose Marley’s vision for Middleton.

Coogan was impressed with what he saw in Stockport but envisages Warwick Mill providing a more affordable product than Weir Mill, which commands some of the highest rents in the city region outside the city centre.

He understands that to redevelop Warwick Mill a substantial viability gap will need to be overcome, likely with the help of the public sector.

However, he is keen to see the delivery of homes at a price point that is attainable for locals; in an early meeting about the project he asked, perhaps idealistically by his own admission, if the development could be entirely affordable.

“When you start out with idealistic objectives, they’re going to be chipped away at, and you’ll come up against obstacles,” he said. “But you have to reach for the stars, so that by the time you’ve been knocked back, you end up somewhere in the middle.

“If you said the only way to do it is to [deliver] a load of high-end luxury flats and gentrify the place, I just wouldn’t be involved. I’d walk away.”