Developer shortlist drawn up for Aytoun Street

DTZ is said to have drawn up a shortlist of potential developers to take forward Manchester Metropolitan University’s (MMU) former Aytoun Street campus.

The area, which consists of a collection of buildings at the edge of Manchester’s gay village, was home to the university’s business school until 2012 but is now largely vacant.

The plot has 250,000 sq ft across four buildings which include two Victorian warehouses, a 1960s block, and one built in the 1980s.

TheBusinessDesk.com understands the shortlisted developers are: CTP, Capital & Centric, Bruntwood and Ask Developments, all based in Manchester, and Landprop, IKEA’s property investment arm.

Landprop was recently linked to the former Granada site before it was acquired by Allied London. Shortlisted developers are now expanding on their proposals for the 2.3-acre site and a final decision is expected in March.

The sale includes the listed Minto & Turner shipping warehouse next to the Rochdale Canal, the listed Minshull House warehouse, the 1960s “tower and amenity blocks” which housed the business school, and the 1980s library. Minshull House is home to the university’s business incubator Innospace which moving to the science and engineering campus on Chester Street, and the North West Film Archive which will be based at the refurbished Central Library in St Peter’s Square.

MMU is consolidating its operations from seven campuses to two – around Oxford Road and at the new Birley Fields site in Hulme. DTZ is handling the disposal of all the surplus sites which also include Didsbury, Elizabeth Gaskell in Victoria Park, Hollings in Fallowfield, and much of the university’s site at Alsager, Cheshire.

DTZ declined to comment.

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