g7uk » development

Hacienda apartments

GS — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 14:53:24 +0000

I saw this sad ad in an estate agent’s window on Deansgate. In case you don’t know, the building that was The Hacienda nightclub was completely demolished in 2002. An apartment block was put up on the site and is now marketed as ‘The Hacienda’.

Manchester’s Odeon cinema subjected to a damaging ‘systematic and methodical’ assault to prevent preservation

GS — Sat, 19 May 2007 16:18:37 +0000

Manchester’s former Odeon cinema, on Oxford Street, has been subjected to a ‘systematic and methodical’ assault to prevent it being preserved, according to the man who tried to save it.

The gay-village village-green?

GS — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 12:14:47 +0000

A notice has appeared on the wire fence that surrounds the land at the junction of Princess Street and Whitworth Street. This is the proposed site for a controversial eleven-storey building that, opponents say, will cast a shadow across Manchester’s gay village.

How George Bush helped North Korea get the Bomb

GS — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 18:19:09 +0000

Greg Palast explains how George Bush helped North Korea get the nuclear bomb.

In a nutshell, U.S. intelligence found that Saudi Arabia was funding Pakistan’s development of the bomb. They were told to back off (as we know, Bush is a big friend of the Saudis) and Pakistan’s Dr. Khan subsequently sold the technology to Libya and North Korea.

Fireworks on the top of Beetham Tower, but does Manchester really need more city centre apartments for the rich? (VIDEO)

GS — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 21:44:45 +0000

At 9.15pm tonight fireworks erupted from the top of Beetham Tower in Manchester, making it look like an over-sized roman candle firework. A topping out ceremony was taking place, marking the completion of the highest point.

The Tower stands 171m (561ft) and 47 storeys tall, making it the highest residential development in Europe. The first 23 floors will house a four-star Hilton hotel and apartments will fill the upper half.

Some people may wonder if Manchester really needs more apartments for the rich. When so many ordinary people in Britain are absolutely desperate for affordable housing and a large number of relatively well-paid workers are now excluded from ever owning a property of any kind due to high prices.

PFI

At the same time, Manchester City Council is busy trying to force various schemes onto residents of its council (public) housing, some of which is in the city centre. The aim being to pretty much wipe its hands of public housing.

Tenants are being denied a vote on whether housing should be transferred to a PFI (Private Finance Initiative) of the kind that is currently causing disaster in the National Health Service, an Arms Length Management scheme or whether it should remain in Council control.

In other parts of the country, residents have made it clear they want to remain in Council control. Which is something that Tony Blair and his New Labour cronies at Manchester City Council don’t want.

Tony doesn’t like it when people disagree with him and, if residents won’t be sensible and vote the way he wants, the answer is simple… Don’t let them vote at all and leave the decision to people who ‘know better’. In other words, those feeble-minded Labour councillors who have compromised their left-wing principles so much in recent years…

So, the original proposals to give residents a vote on the matter in Manchester are quietly being forgotten about. Instead, local Labour councillors will decide ‘what’s best’.

Open All Hours shop threatened with demolition

GS — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 09:06:42 +0000

The shop from the BBC comedy series Open All Hours could be demolished to make way for new developments in Doncaster.

They must be mad! How many tourist attractions does Doncaster have?

130-year-old cast-iron bridge removed on Canal Street

GS — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 13:16:13 +0000

Until about a month ago there was a 130-year-old cast-iron bridge across the canal at the junction of Sackville Street and Canal Street, in the gay village. Now it has been removed and replaced by a concrete replica.

I took these photographs on Sunday, but I held off posting about this until I had checked the facts. But yes it’s true. It has all gone and what you see now, in the pictures shown here, is moulded concrete that will be painted.

The really pathetic thing is that they have screwed the original makers plate onto the concrete.

The existing bridge didn’t meet traffic regulations. Heaven forbid that they might stop enormous buses hurtling along this street and route them another way, so the original bridge could have been preserved. Far easier to destroy another part of Manchester’s heritage…

People may think ‘it’s only a bridge’. The trouble is, bits here and there disappear and, before you know it, an area has lost everything that made it ‘special’ in the first place.

I know Manchester has to be a working city. But we’re told that, in the future, Britain will have to rely on its cultural heritage to compete with emerging nations such as China and India. The trouble is, we’re throwing our cultural heritage down the drain through neglect and unsympathetic development.

In Manchester, the planners seem to have no overall picture in their heads. Everything is turning into an ugly ‘mish-mash’.

Another ugly new car-park

GS — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 23:17:20 +0000

I went up to Microdirect — the computer shop — with Miss Noodle and her man. Opposite, this hideous multi-storey car-park has appeared on the corner of Upper Brook Street and Hathersage Road, as part of the ongoing development of the Manchester Royal Infirmary.

It looks like a giant electric fan-heater and feels too tall and too wide for this spot.

Twenty years ago, I lived near here on Daisy Bank Road (gotta love that name). The area used to have a ‘suburban’ feel. But now, multi-storey buildings line the road all the way from the city centre to Hathersage Road. It feels as if the city is expanding out here.