Stocktons skyscraper unanimously refused as Neville circles

Sensibility prevails.

Fair enough. This pastiche brutalism is no great loss to the future city skyline

How weird to limit to 45 floors. When you’ve said buildings can go that high, what the hell difference is 50 floors? 45 seems a very odd cap? In a constrained city centre with less and less land up for development, seems daft to have a floor cap in this SRF… reach for the stars, b*gger the SRF and go for 80!!!!!!!!!!

I am sure the scheme will return at 45 stories to comply with the SRF, just like what happened at Port Street.

Thank God. This was such an ugly and ill-thought out scheme.

The following comment is shocking too(!):

‘Indeed, the developer-commissioned viability appraisal and the one commissioned by the council estimate the project – based on 100% open market sale – would lose £50m and £29m respectively.’

This just got interestin…

Excellent decision

Start preparing for an appeal – utter nonsense.

My sense is that G Neville is trying to take the success of St Michaels (it took 10 years, and Salboy to sort) and replicate that elsewhere in Manchester. What he needs to realise is that viability is significantly more difficult than when we funded st Michaels, and his stardust will only work certain funders. the Council need to stop being start struck and treat him the same as any other developer of scale in the City. Gary Neville involvement does not automatically ensure success!

make it make sense

MCC need to start driving for affordable houses or sensible S106 contributions… too many getting away with contributing nothing on S106s

What an eyesore. Another ridiculous building

Very strange decision.

Why was this recommended for approval if the viability assessments that were independently evaluated demonstrated that the proposed scheme was unviable by a very significant margin. In the current market for Build to rent / build for sale that is not a surprise. Recommending a clearly unviable scheme for approval is bonkers.

It sound very sensible, I’m glad hear that. Better call off 👍🏻

Do other architects exist? Developers are just lazy.

This government is never going to meet this 1.5 million home target at this rate. Density and ambition is a good thing. Why should nimbys have their way just because their building came a couple years earlier ?

Its the right decision, however I am sure if Renaker turned up with another 50-storey glass box it’d be rubber stamped in no time!

Those who want to live in a successful thriving growing city that is full of vigour and opportunity must pray that this is a temporary moment of madness and that common sense will ultimately prevail when it returns.

Surprised it was recommended for approval. It looks like four cheap looking, really dated towers stacked on top of eachother

A victory for common sense. The daylighting analysis put forward by the objector showed massing studies which were better and addressed the scale and daylighting concerns of the neighbouring tower. A wake up call for the architect and planners who thought this was an acceptable scheme in its current form.

Going through the planning process which i assume took years, getting support from planning officers, but then getting unanimously refused at committee is quite bizarre. Feels like a weird disjoint between the city’s ambitions and councillors’ desires.

For those that want a mid rise building on this site – the SRF doesn’t just set the maximum height, but it also in a way sets a minimum height for the development. It’s a target. So this will probably come back with few story’s off, to appease the technicality just like Port Street did, which lets be honest, looked better taller.

very strange that the council does not want to build upwards in a city with a very scarce land supply. a 5 story difference is arbitrary compared to the SRF “limit” of 45. the big bad developer vs victim NIMBY is a tired narrative which the council is clearly clinging to. the design is actually more interesting than the ones over near Deansgate despite it being another Ian Simpsons !

Good decision – its a horrendously ugly proposal – and unlike most of our towers very linear, which creates a 50 storey wall within the city.

We need to create a city people want to live in – not a windswept, soulless and dark cluster of ugly towers and poor quality public realm.

Great news, this would’ve been such an eyesore.

It would be a good time for MCC’s leadership to start making the point to government that viability assessments are no longer worth anything in terms of deciding policy. Building anything in order to make a £29-50 million loss in a booming market is patently ridiculous, although it’s what happens when MCC sits on its hands for years.
It may be a bit optimistic trying to get through to Steve “Build Baby Build” Reed though given his total capture by the most aggressive parts of the sector.

Just fed up of Manchester planning when they don’t consider current residents voices and change planning permissions AFTER consultation making it a farce. So this is good news so far as it will play havoc if approved.

It begs the question why we have any faith in viability assessments if we have two forecasting losses of £29m and £50m yet the developer seems happy to push ahead.
There are far easier ways to throw away millions of pounds – if the developers and their funders have no faith in these assessments, why should we?

It just goes to show that the majority of documents associated with a planning application are nonsense. There is no way that any developer would go ahead with something that would lose tens of millions. Was this just the developer’s attempt to get out of affordable homes requirements?

Not sorry this has been refused as it’s hideously ugly. I would prefer a new architect for this site but I’m sure this awful scheme will resurface at some point.

they should appeal. Clearly NIMBYism

It’s possible to be pro-growth whilst acknowledging that this is actually a godawful looking scheme that should never have got this far in its current state.

Note too how we only ever send an end view of the main tower, and not the side elevation that like Oxygen is a really ill-considered slab of glass and concrete. MCC could do with a Design Review Panel to help knock these sorts of proposals into shape.

The Manchester Elected Member May Election madness has started in January (like every election year!). So clearly the three Piccadilly Ward Labour Members (including the Chair of the Planning Committee) are fearful of losing a seat in the May Election.

Also let’s be clear this scheme will not be delivered by the promoter of the application – it is simply a mechanism to enhance the value of the land and to sustain that residential value going forwards (even if this application succeeds and then lapses after three years).

I predict that this application will now not come back to Committee after the May Election when the madness has ended (until the next local Election!)

horrific looking building to be fair, so no great loss to the skyline. Please draw something better looking this time…

Now if it had had three points on top and was designed by Foster and partners …..

Apart from the design and choice of architect what utter nonsense a limit of 45 storeys is.
When you see a drone view of Manchester City centre quite a small part of it is high rise.
Within 15 minutes there is plenty of affordable housing and I don’t get these councillors banging on about these skyscrapers not having AF provision.
If Manchester isn’t careful developers will take their money elsewhere.
Manchester we are told on a regular basis leads the way.
Every major city , except perhaps London is envious of our go ahead attitude so just get on with it.

Perhaps there’s scope for a PNW investigative piece on exactly how much of Gary Neville’s own money is ever tied up in the developments he’s the public face of?
Not sure United ever paid players enough in his time to build an empire, but it could be a really inspiring story of how a local lad through brains and hard work, and wisely-invested past wages, has done so well!

He likes spending Peter Lim’s money

Professional planners with planning degrees recommend approval but out dated old fashioned thinking councillors say no. No wonder this country struggles to keep up with the rest of the world with such outdated bureaucratic processes.

Design panel………you cannot be serious. Individual views are interesting of course but the small percentage of people who comment on here in favour or against are not really representative

People say it’s ugly but it’s better than the Renaker towers, my toddler could’ve designed those.

Thank god! It’s a shame the same committee didn’t stop the eyesore “Oxygen” building on the other side of the road. This is real lowest common denominator architecture and is brutal and antagonistic to the soul rather than beautiful and elegant. Truly awful. Please retire to your olive grove in the sky and let others take the city centre forward not backed to Cold War Eastern Europe.

Very odd to mention lack of Affordable Housing when all the Renaker sites together don’t have one Affordable unit.

Don’t know what it is about this scheme, but i just don’t get it. It’s not a elegant building and looks more like a uni project. Clearly Simpson Heugh are good architects but this one lacks subtlety, never mind being against policy.

refuse the first scheme with an actually unique design – back to the glass rectangles dotted all over the place ! wonder how many ‘affordable homes’ renaker built with all that public money… the goal is to build a world class city center not a council estate…

They should be made to incorporate the interesting former industrial buildings at the base. A sensible developer could and would do this.

I know I’m in the minority but I actually like this design, it’s sad it’s not going to get built.

horrid design that definitely wont age well…. Its not that we need to refuse more towers, its more that the people of Manchester deserve buildings that are well designed and beautiful and that wont happen until we as a city free ourselves of the Simpsonhaugh chokehold and demand more diversity in the offices that design our cityscape.

Usual cacophony from the less successful architects and frustrated designers. That’s a decent building that most cities would warmly embrace in terms of its design and the 700 plus homes that it delivers. The very small number who regularly moan on this site are in way representative of what Mancunians really think

A good solution for this site now would be to do a limited-invite (say 5 or 6 firms), paid design competition. A few bigger and a few smaller Manchester architects, and limiting it means that the chosen firms will allocate proper resources to it. We’d love to have a go at this. Russell Bridge – Bridge Architects.