Innospace prepares to relocate
MANCHESTER Metropolitan University’s business incubator Innospace is moving as part of the institution’s consolidation onto two sites.
MMU is moving away from the Aytoun campus to focus on a new area at Birley Fields in Hulme and at its existing All Saints campus around Oxford Road.
Innospace currently occupies 12,500 sq ft at Minshull House, a Victorian warehouse on Chorlton Street, but is expected to move in February to an existing MMU building on Chester Street which sits on the other side of Mancunian Way to its new business school.
It will take 14,000 sq ft, sharing the building with the MMU’s new Digital Innovation initiative which will encompass anything digital happening within the university including courses, research, projects and exhibition space.
Paul Bason, director of MMU’s creative industries body Creative Manchester, said: “This is principally about the consolidation around Birley Fields and the new business school, but it’s also an opportunity for a slightly different approach for us. It should be open by February and we’re having some refurbishment work done between now and then.”
The new Innospace site is a former engineering building once known as John Dalton West. More recently it has been used by arichtecture students and was renamed The Sheds. It is expected to be given another name when it is up and running in its new guise.
Innospace has around 75 tenants using hot-desking space and small start-up offices. Digital agency Modern English and recruitment website HiringHub are among the businesses to have started at the incubator.
