Mayfield arts plan hits the buffers

PLANS to use the derelict Mayfield train station depot in Manchester as a cultural venue are in tatters after the site’s owner said it wanted to use the property for planned rail improvements.

Last October former Ear to the Ground director David Norris and Ground Control’s Jon Drape teamed up with a Liverpool-based planning adviser called the Addy Consultancy to form the Mayfield Depot Partnership which planned to attract arts, food, film, music and fashion events to the building over the next three to five years.

The Warehouse Project, which has been based in Trafford Park, was also interested in using the space and has submitted a planning application to use the nearby Store Street car park underneath Piccadilly Station.

The depot has already been used as an arts venue by the Manchester International Festival which staged a collaboration between the band Massive Attack and the documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis last summer.

But according to a leaked letter London and Continental Railways, which controls the site, has pulled out.

It said: “LCR has decided to discontinue discussions on a lease of Mayfield Depot as an interim entertainment venue. Considerations over regeneration projects are dynamic, and on reaching this position LCR have identified a new opportunity to progress regeneration plans in tandem with revised Network Rail Northern Hub construction plans that may allow both long-term projects to proceed as rapidly as possible.”

It added that while no agreement with Network Rail had been made, “it is unlikely that it will be practicable for timescales to accommodate the proposed interim use”.

No one at the Mayfield Depot Partnership could be reached for comment at the time of publication.

Mayfield Depot on Fairfield Street was opened in 1910 as a four platform station to relieve overcrowding at the near-by Piccadilly train station. It closed to passengers in 1960 and completely shut down in 1986.