Manchester Arndale
Manchester Arndale is a large shopping centre in Manchester, England. It was constructed in phases between 1972 and 1979, at a cost of £100 million. Manchester Arndale is the largest of the chain of Arndale Centres built across the UK in the 1960s and 1970s. It was redeveloped after the 1996 Manchester bombing.
The centre has a retail floorspace of just under , making it Europe's third largest city-centre shopping mall. It is one of the largest shopping centres in the UK, with 41 million visitors annually, ahead of the Trafford Centre, which attracts 35 million.
History
The Manchester Arndale was built between 1971 and 1979 on Market Street in Manchester city centre by developers Town & City Properties, the successors to the Arndale Property Trust, with financial backing from the Prudential Assurance Company and Manchester Corporation. The first phase opened in 1975. It was the largest Arndale Centre in the United Kingdom.Arndale Property Trust
The Arndale Property Trust, formed in the early 1950s, took its name from its founders, Arnold Hagenbach and Sam Chippindale. Hagenbach, a Yorkshireman of Swiss extraction, owned a chain of baker's shops and had invested in retail premises from 1939. Chippindale was an estate agent and former civil servant from Otley. Arndale was unusual, though not unique, amongst property companies in being based outside London and specialising in retail property. Hagenbach invested more and was the quieter partner. Chippindale was blunt and outspoken but was able to persuade sceptical northern councils to accept the company's proposals, where London-based developers could not. Arndale bought property north of Market Street in 1952.Redevelopment plans
The city council recognised before the end of the Second World War that the area around Market Street was in need of redevelopment, and a plan was drawn up between 1942 and 1945 but no progress was made. The City Surveyor stated in 1962: "Manchester crystallised in its Victorian setting ... A new look for the city has been long overdue. ... Its unsightly areas of mixed industrial, commercial and residential development need to be systematically unravelled and redeveloped on comprehensive lines. Only in this way can a city assume its proper place as a regional centre." The corporation used compulsory purchase orders to speed redevelopment at the bomb-damaged Market Place, at the CIS buildings, and at Piccadilly. In the view of the surveyor, "These schemes have greatly improved the appearance of the central area of the City". The corporation's preferred development was a tower above a two or three-storey podium, the form used in all three developments, and later that of the Arndale. Corporation planners added the land and buildings they owned to those acquired by Arndale to increase the size of the available plot.Retail centre
Manchester was traditionally the dominant retail centre of the conurbation and region, and Market Street was the main shopping street from about 1850. Manchester's position weakened during the 1960s as the range of goods available elsewhere increased. Salford had concentrated its three main retail areas into one, with the aim of eliminating the need for residents to travel to Manchester to shop. Stockport town centre had been cleared of cotton mills to improve its appearance, and a major through route had been closed to build the Merseyway Shopping Centre, which doubled local retail spend. In quantitative terms, while in 1961 Manchester's retail spend was 3.7 times that of the next biggest shopping area in the conurbation, by 1971 this had fallen to 2.8 times.In the 1960s and 1970s, the desire to provide modern shopping facilities was prevalent among most councils in major cities, where the Victorian buildings could not accommodate the needs of modern retailers. Other examples from the period include the Bull Ring, Birmingham and the Merrion Centre, Leeds.
Plan of 1965
A 1965 version of the scheme, costed at £15 million and bounded by Market Street, Corporation Street, Withy Grove and High Street, was intended to be the UK's biggest single shopping centre. The only change to the boundaries was in 1973 onto the site of the former Manchester Guardian offices on the opposite side of Market Street. Boots took the extension in its entirety, their biggest store at the time.Town & City Properties
Arndale Property Trust was acquired by Town & City Properties in April 1968. A public enquiry into the development started on 18 June 1968, with a submission that the existing street pattern, while historic, was "hopelessly inadequate for modern requirements". The city planning officer gave evidence that "the development would be comparable with the best carried out in North America and Scandinavia". The scheme was to include seven public houses and a 200-bed hotel. An economist gave evidence that spending in central Manchester would double by 1981. The enquiry finished on 8 July 1968 and reported in early November 1969. The inspector approved the scheme, noting that the region north of Market Street needed redeveloping, and it was sensible to redevelop the frontage. Manchester corporation compulsorily purchased a further of property in 1970 using money raised by selling land outside the city bought for overspill housing.Pre-1971 streets and buildings
The area was a patchwork of mostly Victorian buildings on a 17th and 18th century layout of streets, alleys, and courts. A map used for the 1961 meeting of the British Association shows shops fronting Market Street and Cross Street, with warehousing or office buildings behind.Neither Stewart's The Stones of Manchester nor Sharp et al.'s survey Manchester Buildings describe the area or any buildings in particular. Stewart is generally strong on Victorian architecture, and none of its 60 "principal buildings" were within the redevelopment area. Sharp et al. covered older and new buildings; of the many described over fifty are in the city centre but none were in the cleared area. Pevsner, writing in 1969 when clearance was imminent, found nothing of note. the town clerk, described the buildings as obsolescent in evidence to the public enquiry. Shop Property predicted in 1971 that as "new buildings replace the existing dilapidated ones" the city centre would lose its Coronation Street image, and become "very attractive" to retailers. The Guardian, which had offices in Cross Street, wrote in 1976 that Market Street had been "depressing and decaying" for 30 years.
Later descriptions are more complimentary. Spring wrote of "monstrosities that have ousted the city's grand heritage of nineteenth century commercial and industrial architecture—if the recently completed mammoth and distinctly lavatorial Arndale Centre is anything to go by". Hamilton wrote that the area reflected Manchester's wealth and leadership in the middle of the 19th century, with buildings designed by leading UK architects. Moran called it a "maze of characterful streets".
In the early 1960s, the area had several establishments that made Manchester, in Lee's description, a rival to Hamburg as the "fun city of Europe". Unlicensed coffee bars where people listened to live and recorded music and which did not serve alcohol were effectively outside police control. A 1965 police report by plain-clothes cadets known as the "mod squad" described them as unsanitary, dimly-lit drug dens, run by "men of colour", where young men were fleeced of their money and young women trapped into prostitution. The Manchester Corporation Act 1965 was passed after the report and closed most of them. The Cinephone Cinema was the first in Manchester to show 'continental' X-rated films, mostly erotica. Second-hand bookstalls and what Lee described as "Manchester's very own Carnaby Street" had opened by the early 1970s. The Seven Stars on Withy Grove was one of Manchester's oldest pubs, with a licence dating back to 1356; Redford claimed it to be "oldest licensed house in Great Britain", though this was probably not the case.
Design and construction
The architects were Hugh Wilson and J. L. Womersley. Their work together included Hulme Crescents and the Manchester Education Precinct. Womersley, as Sheffield City Architect, was responsible for the post-war redevelopment of Sheffield in the 1950s and 1960s including the city centre as well as extensive residential estates, notably Park Hill.The developers and the corporation did not allow the architects a free hand. The developers demanded a closed building with little natural light and rejected a more open, roof-lit design. The corporation insisted on a bus station, market, car parking, an underground railway station, and provision for deck access to subsequent developments. Cannon Street was to be kept open with no shop frontages. Corporation Street and High Street were allowed shop fronts on the returns to Market Street. Market Street, a busy thoroughfare, had shop fronts as pedestrianisation was proposed, though this did not happen until 1981. Display windows were forbidden on most of the external walls of the centre and were instead inside. The architects, developers, and city council did not communicate well. The architects realised that "the brief given ... would produce a very introverted building. And we said this would not be attractive".
Construction started in 1972 and the centre opened in stages, with the Arndale Tower and 60 shops opening in September 1976, followed by Knightsbridge Mall in May 1977, the northern mall in October 1977, the market hall, Boots, and the bridge to the Shambles in 1978, and the bus station off Cannon Street and anchor stores Littlewoods and British Home Stores in 1979. On opening, the centre contained 210 shops and over 200 market stalls.
The cost, estimated at £11½ million in the public enquiry in 1968, rose to £26 million by 1972, and to £30 million by 1974, forcing the formation of Manchester Mortgage Corporation, a partnership of Town & City, the Prudential Assurance Company, and Manchester Corporation. The joint company, run by Manchester Corporation, raised £5 million on the stock market, after the Prudential admitted it could not fully fund the project. Town & City came close to bankruptcy, forcing them into a reverse takeover of Jeffrey Sterling's Sterling Guarantee Trust in April 1974 and a £25 million rights issue in 1975–6. Costs reached £46 million by 1976, of which £13 million came from the council. The final cost, described as "enormous" by Parkinson-Bailey, was £100 million, made up of £11.5 million for land, £44.5 million for the building, and £44 million for fitting out.