It comes after we revealed earlier this week how a new 42-storey landmark is to be built off the Mancunian Way
How Manchester city centre will look once the NOMA development is complete
Beetham Tower architect Ian Simpson has predicted a new cluster of skyscrapers will transform Manchester’s skyline in the next few years.
We revealed on Tuesday how his plans for a second tower – half a mile away from the Hilton – are finally coming to fruition three years after they were first announced.
He told the M.E.N. it was ‘brilliant’ that the new 42-storey landmark, off Mancunian Way, would now see the light of day.
Asked whether Manchester is likely to see more skyscrapers built as the economy picks up and developers move in, he said: “I think we will.
“We don’t have anything at the moment apart from the Hilton tower and it’s been a rather lonely building for a time.
“If we can start to cluster a group of taller buildings to the south of the city centre around the tower, I think we will start to see a distinctive silhouette for the city.â€
In the last 12 months cranes have started to return to the city centre skyline, particularly as the town hall agrees wave after wave of new flats.
Mr Simpson said the progress with his latest project – which will be for private rental – was a reflection of an increase in ‘city centre living’.
“That can only be a good thing,†he added.
He said new taller buildings may well start to spring up around the same area as his existing landmarks, pointing to the new 27-storey Axis tower, near to the Hilton, which was granted planning permission last year.
Other plans are also in the offing.
Proposals for a new skyscraper at the St John’s quarter – on the site of the old Granada Studios on Quay Street – could end up eclipsing the Hilton, with initial plans suggesting it could be 50 storeys high.
It will form part of what is being dubbed a ‘vertical village’ as part of the area’s sweeping redevelopment.
Mr Simpson’s original Beetham Tower was completed in 2006 and has dominated the Manchester landscape ever since.
No other skyscraper of a similar height has been built to rival it in the years that followed.
The River Street development, a few minutes’ walk to the south, was first mooted in 2012 but never got built.
New landowners Forshaw are now on site demolishing the eyesore car park that is currently there, with work on the new skyscraper expected to begin at the end of next month.
