THE full construction and fit out of The Factory Manchester will now be £110m - £32m more than originally thought.
The significance of The Factory cannot be overstated
To put that in perspective, for £110m you could also buy the Bridgewater Hall (£42m), the Imperial War Museum North (£28.5m), HOME (£25m) and the Whitworth Gallery refurbishment (£15m).
Alternatively, you could block off 30.8 more public alleyways in Manchester with those £3.57m Library Walk carbuncles.
The goverment pledged £78m to the new arts centre back in December 2014. The Council will be responsible for securing the remaining £32m.
"This won't only be unlike any other arts facility in the UK," said Manchester City Council Leader, Sir Richard Leese, said during a launch event, "The Factory will be unlike anywhere else in the world."
The new estimate for the world-beating arts space at the heart of Allied London's proposed £1.5bn St John's Quarter was today (Wednesday 22 July) revealed in a new report to go before Manchester City Council's Executive on Wednesday 29 July.
The report seeks to highlight the 'huge transformative potential' of The Factory, and also explain the creative and economic rationale behind the project. The report states:
- The Factory is seen as the 'next critical step' in the North becoming a cultural counterbalance to London.
- Research has shown there is a demonstrable need for The Factory - serving a catchment area of 9.7m people within a 90 minute drive.
- There are now 4.5m visits per year to Manchester's museums, galleries, theatres and music venues.
- Manchester is now the third most visited city in the UK behind London and Edinburgh.
- The tourism industry is now worth £6.6bn a year to Greater Manchester - £3.4bn to Manchester.
- Visitors have increased by more than 25% in less than a decade - from 86.9m in 2005 to 109.4m in 2013.
- Estimates suggest The Factory will create 2500 more jobs adding £138m a year to the economy within a decade.
Old Granada Studios - site of the proposed £110m Factory ManchesterThe Factory will have the ability to tranform from a traditional 2,200-seater theatre to a more flexible standing space for up to 5,000 people and host large scale digital screenings, pop concerts, conferences, exhibitions and TV/film sets in ITV's former Granada Studios complex.
"We can be the Royal Opera House during the day and the Warehouse Project at night," said Leese.
There have been concerns that The Factory would displace activity from other venues in the city, however, the report states this will be avoided by commissioning new and original work in partnership with international organisations such as the Paris Opera Ballet, New York's Armory and West Kowloon Hong Kong.
The Factory will also become the new base of the Manchester International Festival (MIF) - which recently wrapped up its fifth biennial festival in the city. "We will combine the best arts festival in the world with the best new arts space in the world," said incoming MIF Director, John McGrath. "We'll allow artists to do what they can't do anywhere else, but also be a place of learning, or training and education."
Leese continued: “The significance of The Factory cannot be overstated. It will be internationally significant, the cultural anchor for the next phase of economic and cultural regeneration in Manchester, Greater Manchester and beyond. It will help power Manchester and the wider region towards becoming a genuine cultural and economic counterbalance to London.”
A planning application will be submitted in May 2016. Construction work should begin in January 2017 with The Factory due to open in July 2019.
Last week, Arts Council England executive director of arts and culture Simon Mellor was named project director for The Factory.
Manchester City Council will directly procure the design team and contractor, supported by Allied London. Development partner Allied London will ensure co-ordination between The Factory and the wider St John’s scheme, which is a joint venture between Allied London and the Council.
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