The Yard, on Bent Street at the back of Cheetham Hill Road, is a converted Victorian school ‘made for creative individuals and collectives’. Tonight, this cool, very now, raw brick interior building is hosting what is billed as an ‘engagement’ session for The Future of Strangeways and Cambridge.
There’s a bouncer on the door, two staff on a desk taking names and contacts, and a lot of tables spread out across the room, with big street maps, post-it notes and crayons. This evening is also billed as a ‘drop-in/information session’…but there’s no information anywhere. Just street maps with the occasional multi-coloured post-it notes stuck on, complete with scribble.
Anyone who has been to any ‘community engagement’ event will scream in horror when the post-it notes and crayons come out. It’s usually a multi-coloured sign that the bulldozers are coming…
“When people see regeneration they see ‘blank canvas’ and that sort of thing…” agrees James Collier, District Centres Programme Manager for Manchester City Council, who has agreed to try and shed some light on the makeover…
And bulldozers?
“Indeed” he breathes “So partly it’s about getting out there, talking to people about what this work is and what it isn’t…We’re trying to get a finer understanding of the business base in Strangeways and Cambridge – what businesses are here, what sectors are they in, what are their plans for the future and what would they like to see change in the future? And where do they see themselves in the future?”
It’s estimated that there are three thousand businesses in the Strangeways/Cambridge area. And while dozens are represented here tonight feeding into the process, there’s nothing going the other way. No information at all, bar what is already in the public domain (see here and see here)
“There’s none” James confirms “It’s because we’re not at that stage of the process – sometimes councils will draft something up with a fair bit of detail and take that out to people and say ‘What do you think?’, and then adjust it. Strangeways is so big and complicated and historic, that’s not the right approach. We need to speak to people before we’ve done the drawings. So you won’t see any CGIs or plans tonight; we’ve just got existing streets because we want to start the conversation, listening and gathering information. And then, in June, we’ll be drafting stuff, and in the summer we’ll be bringing proposals for people to buy into.”
The elephant in the room and casting its huge shadow over the street maps is HMP Manchester, aka, Strangeways Prison. Manchester City Council has made no secret that it wants it gone…but it’s owned and run by the Ministry of Justice which has no immediate plans to shut the place.
“Having a Victorian prison on the edge of an existing, thriving city centre is not good for the growth of central Manchester and we would like it moved somewhere” he says, pointing around the room and adding “What this is doing, is building the evidence case for moving the prison. So we say it’s a barrier to growth, and it’s about putting some meat on that argument: how and why?”
Most of the prison is Grade 2 listed although newer buildings housing the gym and workshops aren’t, and neither is the huge external wall. But, the Council’s District Centres Programme Manager reflects that any future plans for what he calls “The Beast” is the government’s problem, not the Council’s… “This isn’t about doing the Ministry of Justice’s work for them; they will have to dispose of it in due course one day…”
There will be two plans eventually drawn up for the area – one with the prison, and one without…
James Collier is adamant that the city centre needs to grow, and having seen off what was dubbed ‘Counterfeit Street’ across Bury New Road from the jail, the Council’s sights are set on the shabby warehouse, sweatshop and dodgy dealing district between the Old and New Road. Why now and not twenty years ago? Is it just about developers cashing in?
“The city centre is growing massively” he offers, despite every bit of land in the centre being developed, a recession and a cost of living crisis. But growing massively for who? A few years ago Manchester Council’s Strategic Director argued that test of the city’s success would be how many rollerbladers the place could attract
“The city is growing and that involves a lot of people coming from different parts of the UK” James adds “As a Council, inclusive growth is the phrase we’ve used widely. I think if you look more broadly at what we’re doing in terms of affordable housing around the city. We’re using our land and our money, working with registered social providers to build affordable housing in large parts of the city…”
But not in the city centre? The Latimer scheme for 461 apartments on the old Boddingtons Brewery site is mostly shared ownership, which is not particularly affordable, and, beyond this, there is no commitment.
Meanwhile, on the Salford side of the regeneration, the Cambridge area, the signs were there eight years ago that the housing estates which suffered in the flood of 2015, will probably be flattened…
Back in 2016, the Salford Star reported a statement in Salford Council’s Draft Local Plan/Masterplan for Lower Broughton that it will be “Supporting the replacement of existing buildings at risk of flooding, particularly housing, with new/alternative accommodation that has a significantly lower risk of being badly affected by a flood event due to careful location, design and ‘flood proofing'”.
At an earlier Cambridge drop-in ‘engagement/information’ session, no new information was forthcoming either. And this evening, all James Collier will agree on is that there is a “challenge” from flooding.
The Bury New Road project is mainly concerned with heritage, and in this part of the world there’s links to everyone from Friedrich Engels to The Smiths, Bonnie Prince Charlie to Boddingtons, and Bugzy Malone to James Bond. Plus immigrant beginnings, riots, anti-fascist fights and more.
In the regen so far, none of this heritage has been recognised, particularly not in the new, incredibly bland, Manchester College campus that sits on the corner of the old Boddingtons site. Will the new Strangeways offer more than a tired street name and re-purposing some old buildings when it comes to recognising the rich history of the area?
“We’ve got an architect on board in terms of built heritage” he responds “Heritage is part of the brief and we’re very keen…we want to keep it where we can and use this process to promote it and learn more about that historic stuff which can feed into the proposals…heritage will be embedded into the plans. You will see this summer.”
For the moment, the Strangeways/Cambridge regeneration is just empty street maps and post-it notes but you get the feeling that, behind the curtain, regen wizards are already summoning the bulldozers with developers at the driving wheel. Given their joint track record, it’s over to the Salford and Manchester Councils to prove otherwise…
Business can take part in the online consultation here or via the QR code below…
If not a business contact the team to find out how to engage with the project… planningconsultations.uk@avisonyoung.com or phone 0161 956 4054
God that picture gives me flashbacks to about 1997 in Seedley. I was a kid and I wanted to know how to mark on the “consultation” map that I wanted rubbish bins. That wasn’t an option apparently. Plan came back with my street to be compulsory-purchased and bulldozed. One way of dealing with the rubbish I guess.