Motel One plans stay in Manchester

HODDER + Partners has won an architectural competition to develop a 330-bed hotel on a site opposite Manchester’s Piccadilly station.

The site on London Road sits between Carlyle Group’s Piccadilly Place development and the Grade II*-listed London Road Fire Station site owned by Britannia Hotels Group, which also has planning permission for a hotel.

The site, which currently contains the Hotel International building, is being developed by London-based Olympian Group and the completed building will be let to German hotel operator Motel One. If planning is approved for the scheme, it will be one of the first Motel One sites to open in England.

Hodder’s design seeks to make a transition from the intensity and scale of the Piccadilly Place to that of the Fire Station and provide what the practice describes as “a calm foil to the exuberance of the latter”.

A detail planning application will be submitted for the hotel at the end of this month and the developer plans to make a start on site in September.

Olympian Group has experience of developing retail, leisure and hotel schemes. Three years ago, it completed a 135-bed Park Inn Hotel at the Leigh Sports Village scheme at Leigh, near Wigan.

Hodder + Partners is also architect on the redevelopment of Gateway House at Piccadilly Approach on the other side of London Road, where Realty Estates gained planning before Christmas for a new 270-bed hotel with bars and restaurant facilities in December.

This is the first of a three-phase scheme which will also see 16 ground floor units redeveloped, 40,000 sq ft of Grade A offices and a new Health & Fitness club being built.

Motel One is a Munich-based budget design hotel chain predominantly based in Germany, but with new openings planned for Edinburgh, Brussels, Vienna and Krakow. It currently has 39 hotels but is planning a further five openings in 2012.