Russells wins Motel One build
RUSSELLS Construction has picked up the contract to deliver a 330-room hotel close to Piccadilly in Manchester.
German budget hotel chain Motel One has already agreed a 25-year lease on the 14-storey building.
Three Victorian buildings have been demolished to make for the Whitworth Street scheme and preparatory work is now underway.
It is being funded by LaSalle Investment Management which agreed a £25.5m deal with Livia, a subsidiary of the London-based Olympian Group, last month. Livia is still involved as the manager of the project which should be finished for an opening in summer 2015.
Russells director Gareth Russell said: “The Manchester Motel One will be our largest hotel scheme to date and follows the successful delivery of a number of developments across the country.
“We’ve established a reputation not only for delivery of hotel schemes, but also as experts in dealing with tight sites in constrained city centre locations. Our major projects team has developed a methodology and a number of supplier partnerships which create genuine cost and programme savings for our clients.”
Until January entrepreneur Julian Lyons held a lease on the site and employed 60 staff working at the Hotel International, a pub called The Outpost and Legends nightclub. Legends was the location of the Twisted Wheel club in the 1960s after it moved from Brazennose Street.
The club was famous for being the starting point for the Northern Soul movement and this heritage was kept alive by a soul revival night which ran for 12 years but bowed out on December 30. The buildings were owned by Targetfollow and sold off when part of that business went into administration. They were picked up by Olympian which secured planning consent in July 2012.
