Sleuth is a sideways glance at the city every week, it's the truth, but Sleuth's truth. He's several people all at once. Sleuth sometimes even gets serious.@mcrsleuth
HOME FAILS TO MEASURE UP
Oh dear, careful with that tape measure Bob. Someone has blundered at Sleuth's fave new place, HOME - the new arts centre with five screens, two theatres, an art gallery, a restaurant, a bar and a shop.
Bob, the builder, or maybe Jan, the architect, messed up in Cinema 1. They built the window from the projector room too low. So in the first two rows of seats people standing up to go to the loo or buy popcorn interfere with the projection. Shadows on the screen and all that. Let's hope basketball team Manchester Giants never sit there.
As HOME admits: ‘It’s a design issue that affects some seats in the two back rows of Cinema 1. We are very aware of this and plan to address it as soon as possible. The matter has been noted with the architects and construction companies and we are working to resolve it as soon as we can, in collaboration with Manchester City Council who own the building.’
In the scheme of things this isn't the biggest disaster. But everything is worse when £25m of public money has been spent to deliver HOME. In that case any loss (even a minor one with seat sales) of revenue through incompetence such as this is embarrassing. Especially in these times of devastating council cuts.
What's mad about this is it isn’t a tape measure error with one of the shelves in the shop. It’s an error over a key component of a main performance space. Let's hope the contracts were watertight at HOME and whoever messed up pays up. Or maybe the contractor and architect were both at fault, in which case, reckons Sleuth, given the origin of the architects, they could go Dutch.
SOME MORE HOME TRUTHS
Yet, Sleuth really does adore HOME. It's a fine addition to the city and this daftness shouldn’t cloud that. Despite reservations, not least from us, the place is proving a cracking success. The opening weekend was a real winner attended by an estimated 28,000 people. During the weekend almost 15,000 people visited the galleries. And as previously reported Confidential approves of the food and drink. The square outside will have to be added to our Best of City Centre Terraces as well. Finally, while Sleuth thinks the colours of the First Street buildings nearby might date rapidly, he has a new favourite view from the adjacent car park.
NEW SPINNINGFIELDS RESTAURANT
Sleuth hears Spinningfields’ former Haig Club, previously The Long Bar, is set for another rejig this summer, with the launch of new café bar, Rust and Stone, from the folks behind The Lawn Club. Sleuth’s told it’ll be an ‘organic, European bistro style’ offering, serving salads alongside food from the open air grill (barbecue to you and me). Sleuth wants the word 'organic' banned along with 'with a twist' and the phrase 'locally-sourced' and 'mayonnaise' - not the word as such just all mayonnaise as it's vile - and the use of the prefix 'bio' in front of anything except 'ology'. (Sleuth feels better now). Anyway, let’s hope Rust and Stone is good and that's all we want. Certainly better than that other organic Manchester venue, 8th Day on Oxford Road, whose dining room feels like a seventeenth-century puritan convention plotting to ban folk festivals because they encourage cheerfulness. (Sleuth will stop shouting now).
Rust and Stone indeedFC UNITED PARTY LIKE IT’S 1968
Confidential would love to congratulate the third football club of Manchester on its splendid inauguration of Broadhurst Park, Moston, last week. 4,232 fans turned up for a match to mark the opening of the stadium against Portuguese giants of European football, Benfica. The latter had played Manchester United in the European Cup Final of 1968 and of course FC split from big United in 2005 when the Glazers took over. The Northern League North club might have lost 0-1 but the occasion was a pure party and underlines the emergence of a third major Manchester club since Manchester Central collapsed in 1932. Sleuth is pleased Abraham Lincoln and Bishop Fraser joined in as well.
NEW BAR FOR OLD GRANADA STUDIOS
Old Granada Studios welcomed its first new bar last night, with the opening of Hello Bar in the HQ Building/Hello House on Atherton Street (soon to become Allied London’s Manchester Grande hotel). Ok so it’s not much of a bar, being only 5ft long, serving a handful of drinks and closing before 9pm. But a bar’s a bar nonetheless. You can find Hello Bar in the Hello House at the Hello Hub which Sleuth understands is part of Hello Work – a ‘new generation’ of work space, you know, foosball tables, beanbags and more Apples than Scrumpy Jack’s back garden.
Hq Building/Hello HouseST JOHN’S UTOPIA (AND MASSIVE BAGUETTE)
Speaking of Old Granada Studios, Sleuth was browsing through the impressive new brand book for the planned £1bn St John’s Quarter on the former ITV site running along Water Street. Two things in particular jumped out at Sleuth, the first was just how bloody massive the St John’s baker’s baguettes are going to be…
Sleuth also loves St John’s utter utopianism (particularly the opening line)…
...a place where you shall go out with joy, and shine with peace, and the mountains and the hills and the Irwell and the massive, massive baguettes will break forth before you, there'll be shouts of joy and the trees and fields will clap.
