ZOMBIE car parks? People have been known to leave car parks missing an arm and a leg. But car parks eating the cars? Militant environmentalism perhaps. They’ve had enough. Get on yer bike.
“We’re lobbying the council to impose time restrictions on temporary car parks so they are truly temporary. After work from city centre councillors a 12 month time limit on the BBC site's use as a car park was imposed."
Beth Knowles & Cllr Peel. HappyWell, it’s neither of those. There’s been a slight titter (slight because most people drive) of noise around Manchester this year regarding the scourge of these so-called ‘zombie’ car parks. A phrase coined by an angry pirate in Ancoats.
The issue came back to our attention when handed the City Centre Voice (Labour’s city centre newsletter) at a recent residents meeting. The newsletter displays a collection of photos of our Labour city centre politicians looking decidedly happy or sad depending on the topic at hand. Trees. Happy. Post Office closed. Sad. The zombies fall under the latter.
Post Office closed? Look sadSo what is a ‘zombie’ car park?
They are long-term ‘temporary’ car parks, thrown up on the sites of demolished buildings or patches of undeveloped and desolate plots in order to make developers a quick few quid while they decide what to actually do with the space, whether they can do it, and, most importantly, whether they have enough dough to do it.
They’ve been popping up all over. At the proposed River Street tower by Mancunian Way (of which a number of health and safety concerns have been voiced), at numerous sites throughout Northern Quarter including the fire-ravaged former site of Dobbins on Oldham Street, Little Lever Street and at a number of ‘suspended spaces’ throughout Salford, Ancoats and Hulme. Anywhere where construction sites have halted, developers are twiddling their thumbs or bickering with the council. Tends to be a mix of all three.
The popular zombie on the former BBC site, Oxford Road
The most conspicuous of these ‘zombies’ is the six-acre site of the former BBC New Broadcasting House on Oxford Road, inaugurated in 1976, demolished in late 2012.
This site has been earmarked as a key area for the ‘Manchester Corridor’ (essentially Oxford Road). Also painfully referred to as the ‘knowledge corridor’, it is a region of Manchester that has been identified with the potential to accommodate ‘a workforce of 77,000 and generate £4.8 billion GVA (Gross Value Added) to 2020, achieved in part by a series of capital investments of £3 billion.’ At least according to the Stategic Redevelopment Framework for the BBC site produced by Deloitte in partnership with the Committee for Vague and Optimistic Numbers.
All well and good. Except that the former BBC site, bought in 2011 for around £10m by Realty Estates, a Manchester-based developer owned by Iranian-born Yousef Tishbi, still remains, heading in to 2014, an unsightly, expansive but hugely popular ‘zombie’ car park.
There’s been numerous discussions and plans for a 800,000 sq ft mixed-use development, with offices, private and student accommodation, a hotel, a Tesco-Sainsburys-M&S-Waitrose-Metro-Express, a Starbucks, Costa, Greggs and a Subway, most probably. But no official planning applications have yet been submitted. Just a retrospective application submitted for the change of use of the site to a ‘temporary’ car park. An application submitted after they’d started using it as a car park anyway. Naughty that.
City centre candidate Beth Knowles looking glum in front of a zombie car park
This has irked Labour city centre ward candidate Beth Knowles: “The main problem with the old BBC site was no planning permission was initially granted for the transformation of the site's use to a car park and no timelines for construction were put in place by the developers. We can't allow this kind of activity to carry on unchecked.”
Still, as ugly and brash as it may be, walk past the old BBC site during office hours on any given weekday and it’s packed. The same applies to the car park on Hilton Street in the Northern Quarter. So there’s clearly the demand. In which case, what’s the problem? There’s a public demand. It’s being filled.
“It's not necessarily that zombie car parks are unacceptable,” says Knowles, “but the rapid rise of them throughout the city centre is both an eye sore and a poor use of land. We are extremely short of open, usable community space in Manchester city centre and when people see car parks taking up every inch of that potentially usable space, whether temporary or otherwise, it becomes an issue for residents and visitors alike.
“It might seem reasonable to those who drive in and out of the city centre every day, but residents have a very different opinion on the spaces they live in and around. We want less people to come in by car and instead travel by public transport and other methods, so more spaces doesn't help in this regard.”
The car park on the stalled River Street development by Mancunian way
But surely it’s up to the land owners what they do with the land. What can the council do about it? “The use of land is quite rightly decided by its owners and the council locally have little say over whether that is a pop-up car park or a green park,” says Knowles. “But we are lobbying government for a 'use it or lose it' policy, whereby after two years of land remaining undeveloped local councils can purchase it and transform the space by working with local communities.
“We’re lobbying the council to impose time restrictions on temporary car parks so they are truly temporary. After work from city centre councillors a 12 month time limit on the BBC site's use as a car park was imposed.
“However,” Beth continues, “local powers are limited, with planning policy set out by and policed by national government.”
We pinned down Yousef Tishbi, owner of Realty Estates, buyers of the former BBC site, on his plans for the area. He too, was irked: “All this talk of safety concerns and zombie car parks is nonsense. I’d like you to show me one of these temporary car parks that are in a better condition than ours on Oxford Road. Our competitors are trying to cause problems for us because we’re offering a better service and driving down prices. Look at the state of some of these other car parks.”
Tishbi was keen to assert the temporary nature of the car park and the future progress on the former BBC site: “Look, that car park doesn’t anywhere near cover the costs of that site. It’s only ever been a temporary measure.
“I’ve actually had all the architects and development advisors in to my office this week. We’re hoping to have definite planning in place by the end of January to early February 2014 for at least part of the site. Building may start by mid-2014 depending on opposition. We’ve been talking to a number of private and student accommodation suppliers, small supermarket chains, food and beverage companies, stationary companies and leisure companies including gyms.”
Some progress at least. To some extent, you have to sympathise with Tishbi. After all, we live in a free market economy. Why not put up a ‘zombie’ car park whilst going through the motions? Surely it’s just good business.
Site of the former BBC building, bought by Realty Estates for £10m
Sam Easterby-Smith, anti-zombie car park campaigner and creator of Parkstarter doesn’t see it that way: “Manchester is lacking in green spaces, especially when compared with other major European cities. It does, however, have a wealth of vacant ‘grey spaces’ like Dobbins on Oldham Street, the area between Port and Tariff Street, Piccadilly Basin, Exchange Station, a chunk of Salford and half of Ancoats. The list goes on.”
“Land owners unable or unwilling to invest in these sites invariably leads to a zombie. It’s fast and an easy revenue stream for minimal investment. But owners and operators frequently don’t even seek planning permission for the sites and the authorities turn a blind eye. If you built an extension on your house without permission, would they ignore that?”
He has a point. Sick of all the grey, Easterby-Smith set up Parkstarter, a crowd-funding initiative to attempt to reclaim poorly used urban spaces in Manchester. In July 2013 Parkstarter gathered nearly 3000 signatories for a petition opposing the use of the former Dobbins site on Oldham Street. Campaigners also staged a green intervention at the site, paying for a number of car park spaces for the day, laying turf and having a picnic. The Green Giant rises.
Parkstarter on Oldham Street
“Unregulated car parks bring more cars into the city centre, bringing with it pollution, noise and pressure on an already creaking road infrastructure,” says Easterby-Smith. “The grey spaces create a poor impression for visitors and act as crime magnets, salubrious places to shoot up, do deals or smash a few car windows.”
So what if Easterby-Smith had his way?
“We should be thinking more holistically of what Manchester needs. Transforming even a few of these sites into green spaces would drastically change the character and environment of our city for the better.
“It’d bring economic benefits for businesses through increased footfall, raising the desirability and value of surrounding properties, sinking carbon rather than creating it, getting people out of their cars and onto bicycles and public transport, giving our children places to play.
“In short we could have a city that we could be truly proud of and visitors would flock to. A green city, not a grey city.”
Easterby-Smith’s utopian view for Manchester is admirable, but romantic. Yes we’d all love a city full of green, airy, revitalizing spaces. A Disney city with birds whistling from our shoulders, a city where everyone would travel canal side by bicycle, scarves billowing in the wind, stopping on the corner to read Keats and sip at macchiatos. Of course every society needs dreamers, so its good on Knowles and Easterby-Smith for trying, we need people like them. But they are facing an uphill struggle to substitute the grey for the green.
There have been small victories. Easterby-Smith’s first prototype park had the owner of the Oldham Street zombie shouting down his mobile, pulling his hair out and calling the police this summer. They never came.
Hilton Street: A decrepit former Dig The City installation and a handful of grow boxes
Knowles too was keen to show me the handful of allotments awarded to residents by the Hilton Street car park, managed by Town Centre car parks. Still, it’s a few grow boxes in the corner of a huge car park to appease the residents and a sorry looking Dig The City installation dumped there because nobody knew what else to do with it. Cheers.
The problem is that green is expensive. The soon to be installed trees for Tariff Street will run in to the thousands and the splash of green in Stevenson Square cost around £40,000.
Grey is cheaper, grey produces a return and grey provides for the countless commuters that rely on car parks like these to earn a living. More cars should never be encouraged, but the drivers should not be punished and forced to pay escalating parking tariffs for a limited number of spaces. Competition drives down prices.
The reality is that within our system property developers will always exist to make money. If that involves throwing up a ‘zombie’ car park with minimum effort to create a slow but regular stream of income whilst going through the convoluted and often drawn-out planning stage then they will do so. Most of us would probably do exactly the same.
So what’s the solution? Guerilla Gardening. Plant some Japanese Knotweed. It may be a thug of a weed, but it’s green, reasonably attractive and practically indestructible. It'll tear through tarmac in no time. That’ll teach ‘em.
Follow @David8Blake on twitter.
Zombie Car Park, Charles Street
Zombie on Little Lever Street
