HOTEL GOTHAM, which bosses hope will be 'the sexiest hotel in Europe', is set to open in the former Midland Bank building at 100 King Street in April 2015.
The announcement comes as hotel occupancy in the city reaches record levels, with an average 76% occupancy rate in the first eight months of 2014.
"What we're trying to achieve here is a high-end boutique hotel, something to match The Lowry Hotel, for instance, in terms of luxury, but we also want colour and easy-going glamour."
“Hotel Gotham is really taking shape now," said Robin Sheppard, chairman of Bespoke Hotels. "The construction team at Marshall’s and our design partners at Squid-Inc are on track to deliver an exceptional and glamorous hotel, in a beautiful historic building. We can feel the excitement bubbling."
The Midland Bank building is widely considered to be one of Manchester's finest, designed in 1928 and completed in 1935 by the revered London-born architect, Edwin Lutyens, who also designed the Cenotaph in Whitehall, the Thiepval memorial in France and New Delhi (sometimes referred to as Lutyens' Delhi).
The new hotel took on the 'Gotham' name due to the building's resemblance to neoclassical designs in New York - 'Gotham' being a nickname given to the city by Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow author Washinton Irving.
Midland Bank building (1935)
Inside Jamie Oliver's Italian in the main banking hall of the building
The new luxury five-star hotel from the Bespoke Hotel Group - who manage nearly 100 hotels across the world including The Light Apart Hotel on Church Street in the Northern Quarter - will sit above Jamie Oliver's Italian restaurant which occupies the main banking hall of the building.
Hotel Gotham will feature 60 boutique bedrooms, four of which will be £300-per-night 'inner sanctum suites' complete with their own gardens.
The new hotel will also feature a restaurant, a roof-top members-only club and a 'prohibition style bar' - maintaining the hotel's 20s art deco theme.
The hotel will also create up to 100 new jobs for the city, both full and part-time.
Hotel Gotham marketing images
Sheppard told Confidential last year:
"Guests will enter a lift off the street and then go straight to the top floor where there'll be a reception, bar and open terrace area with views across the city. To get to the bedrooms they'll go back down levels of the building.
"All the rooms will have external views with the exception of four internal suites that will be very special. These will be generously scaled filled with trick of the eye effects and faux gardens."
"What we're trying to achieve here is a high-end boutique hotel, something to match The Lowry Hotel, for instance, in terms of luxury, but we also want colour and easy-going glamour.
"The restaurant, for example, will have high quality food but it won't be cold or too formal - and it will be very different from Jamie Oliver's place on the ground floor. In essence we want Hotel Gotham to be very lively, we want it to reflect the city."
