JV selected for Aytoun St campus
A JOINT venture between Manchester developer Capital & Centric and construction firm Henry Boot is said to have won the competition to develop Manchester Metropolitan University’s (MMU) Aytoun Street campus.
Estates Gazette said the 50:50 venture has agreed to pay £7.5m with contracts due to exchange in the coming months.
It beat off competition from CTP, Bruntwood and Ask Developments, all based in Manchester, and Landprop, IKEA’s property investment arm.
The Aytoun Street 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.
Future plans are likely to include a hotel, restraurants and apartments. 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 is moving to the science and engineering campus on Chester Street, and the North West Film Archive which is moving to 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.
MMU finance director John Cunningham: “We were impressed by the approach to the development of the site taken by HBCC and are confident that they will show the necessary application and persistence to work through the various challenges necessary to undertake a successful redevelopment of the site. The final scheme will make a positive contribution to this part of the Manchester city centre.”
There was no comment from Capital & Centric at the time of publication.
