Booming Manchester city centre is set to get a lot bigger

Plans for the £850 million redevelopment of a key 30 acre site next to Piccadilly Station are being put out for people to have their say following the approval of outline proposals by town hall bosses.

The Mayfield Partnership – a joint venture between Manchester City Council, London and Continental Railways, the owners of Mayfield Station, Transport for Greater Manchester and mixed-use property regeneration specialist U+I – will be staging a series of public exhibitions in early March.

The regeneration of Mayfield will deliver a new iconic mixed-use community in the heart of Manchester. The site, once home to Mayfield railway station, has been derelict for over a decade and the regeneration will breathe new life into what was once a thriving city district.

It will provide 1,500 homes in a distinctive new urban quarter, 155,000 sq m of office space, two hotels, one of 350 bedrooms, retail and leisure facilities and a new city park which will straddle the banks of the River Medlock and run for almost the entire length of the site, covering 6.5 acres.

In total the scheme will create more than 7,500 office, retail, leisure and construction jobs and will reshape and extend the city south from  Piccadilly station. It will build on the benefits of the Northern Hub, Network Rail’s programme of targeted upgrades to improve rail connectivity in the north of England and act as a catalyst for the regeneration of the wider Piccadilly area.

Drawing on the heritage of the site, the regeneration will also seek to enhance many of its historic features: developing alongside and improving the River Medlock which flows through the site while maintaining some of the landmark buildings that still stand and making the most of the railway heritage of the area.

The ten year plan aims to retain the best of the existing architectural and natural heritage including Mayfield station, built in 1910 to revive overcrowding at Piccadilly (then London Road station), which closed to passengers in 1960 and for goods in 1986.

Ten years later, television producers deemed its dereliction a perfect location to film the violent denouement of The Street, an episode of Prime Suspect starring Helen Mirren. The historic Star and Garter in Fairfield Street, one of Manchester’s best loved music venues, is also likely to be retained, but in what guise remains unclear.

The pub’s future is likely to be one of the most contentious issues to emerge during the consultation period – as was the fate of the Abercromby in Bootle Street during the debate about Gary Neville’s St Michael’s project.

The Mayfield Partnership’s plans will go on display at Medlock Primary School between 2pm and 6pm on 1st March. In Piccadilly Gardens near Victoria’s statue from 9am to 5pm on 3rd March, then daily between 8th – 11th March in Archway Seven, Temperance Street, Mayfield, from noon until evening.