LET'S HOPE lessons, however painful, have been learnt from Ancoats Dispensary and steps are being taken to preserve another listed building just up the road to stop it suffering the same fate.
There is a hole in the space-time continuum and it used to be filled with meat.
The Mackie Mayor building on Swan Street has already been derelict for too long but work has now been agreed to make it wind and water tight and give it a minimal makeover so at least it is safe to go inside.
It is owned by the city council and as part of the Smithfield regeneration area there had been grand plans for its re-use but so far they have not materialised.
Mackie May Building - Thanks To Flickr And Vintage Lulu. Spot The Lovely Cornucopias Flanking The City Coat Of Arms
Artist Michael Trainor wrote this wonderfully evocative précis for the Creative Tourist web magazine earlier this year.
'There is a hole in the space-time continuum and it used to be filled with meat. You would think that after nearly two decades of regeneration in Manchester city centre there wouldn’t be any buildings left to discover – and especially not a vast time machine of a building that lies in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. Ladies and gentlemen I give you…The Mackie Mayor Meat Market.
'To be fair, it’s not that Mackie Mayor’s needs to be discovered (it is owned by Manchester City Council, though few people seem to recall its existence and it is rarely seen).
'It’s more that it needs a purpose. In the last 30 years, this ornate, voluminous, early-Victorian, Grade II-listed, purpose-built meat market (opened by Mayor Mackie in 1858 as part of Europe’s biggest fresh produce market) has variously acted as a training centre for unemployed young people, a shopmobility centre and a skate board park (yes, really).
'Plans to turn it into a £12m archives centre fell through a few years back, and now the water is pouring in, and the pigeons of dereliction and mushrooms of death are in residence.'
Now agreement has been reached that Salford based developers Muse, who have just gained permission for a ten storey apartment block behind (click here), will carry out remedial works to this Grade II listed building at the same time.
Wes Erlam, senior development surveyor with Muse said: “At the moment it is neither accessible or safe and we intend in the first instance to make it wind and water tight.
“We want to make sure we can do something with the building so that it can be brought back into beneficial use.
“What exactly that use will be we don’t know but we need to be able to make the building safe to go inside so we can market it properly.
“I would love to think that there would be some viable cultural or community use but it needs a commercial reality.”
All very well but the worrying detail is that this vital repair work needs a separate planning application and while a report says the work will be completed by early 2014 it does not say when it will start.
English Heritage gave its blessing to the apartment scheme in the hope that it would: 'focus attention on the need to revive the Mackie Mayor Building as the final phase of the regeneration of this important, historic area of Manchester.'
Well it has.
And it should be pressing for a planning application to go in as soon as possible and urging progress.
One look down the road should add some haste. No developer would want the contents of the rants on this Confidential article directed at them. Nobody it would seem would want Mackie Mayor to share the fate of Ancoats Dispensary.
The full planning agreement is here.
As to its future use, why change history?
A lively market selling all manner of fresh produce would be a perfect fit. There’s a fabulous example in the old town in Cannes with a similar vaulted building selling all manner of vegetables, fish, meat, breads, flowers and the like and it too sits in an area dense with apartments, hotels and offices.
It is a hive of noise, activity and colour and seen as an asset to the neighbourhood and not as a nuisance.
They might think about creating the same here and they wouldn't even have to change the name above the door.
Mackie Mayor Building - Thanks To Flickr And Dullhunk
