Jonathan Schofield picks out some recent stories from across the city
Big tower, big star
Tuesday 11 November and in Albion Street’s packed railway arches developer Salboy unveiled a monumental model of their proposed 246-metre “landmark’” tower. This hardly needed the repeated vocalisation of “landmark” as it will inevitably be so, it’s bloody massive.
Viadux Two, aka Nobu Tower, will sit between the tramlines over from the Briton’s Protection pub and the already completed Viadux One which is a neighbour of Beetham Tower. It will be 806 feet high in old money, whereas the current lanky lad in Manchester is South Tower at Deansgate Square at 201m or 659ft. I’m a sucker for an architectural model. The model for Viadux Two, aka Nobu Tower, is a stunner, probably 11ft high and meticulously and gleefully detailed.
The launch party and the model attracted lots of attention but most people had come for something else. They’d come to grab a sprinkling of fairy dust. They wanted to bask in the presence of a real Hollywood celebrity. Oscar-winning Robert De Niro was in town along with two other co-founders of Nobu.
Nobu will bring a very high end restaurant on the ground floor and a hotel and 'residences' higher up – literally high end. The residences might actually live up to the overused estate agent epithet of ‘luxury'.
The media were in a frenzy as you might have noticed from the local and national coverage. Meanwhile De Niro was honest about how little he knew about Manchester. In a short speech he threw in some nice platitudes about the city having “real character” and seemed “creative, passionate, strong,” but that was it. The 82-year-old finished with: “I look forward to coming back when (Nobu Tower) is finished, if not before. I plan to be around. It’s gonna take six years. I'm gonna MAKE sure I'm around.” The last sentence carried an echo of the “You talking to me?” scene in Scorsese’s Taxi Driver.
I'll be reviewing the architecture of the tower later this week.
PS: If I had a pound for every person who quoted Bananarama I would have been able to nip up to Skof for a full tasting menu.
Christopher Wren of Manchester?
The architectural practice behind the tower is SimpsonHaugh (Ian Simpson is standing to the right of De Niro in the line-up above). Is there another city anywhere where one firm dominates the skyline as completely as this lot? All the towers at this end of the city, save two or three short arses, are from the practice. Surely the last time this happened was in London with Christopher Wren’s church spires and towers more than three hundred years ago.
At the Nobu launch I asked Ian Simpson whether he was the 21st century Manchester Wren. He laughed and said: “I’d prefer Waterhouse.” Alfred Waterhouse was the architect of Manchester Town Hall, the University, part of the Kimpton Clock Tower Hotel (Refuge Assurance) and so many other Manchester buildings.
One day perhaps Simpson will get a Wetherspoons named after him, just like Waterhouse has on Princess Street.
Sunlight House gets an expensive polish
There was a very lively launch event at Sunlight House a couple of weeks ago with GM Mayor Andy Burnham present. The Art Deco classic has been refurbished at a price of £35m by French company Karrev. The 1932 building is named after Joe Sunlight, the maverick Russian Jewish émigré, who designed and owned the building. The most impressive internal feature is the huge light well that falls away seemingly for miles. Current tenants include The Crown Prosecution Service. The swimming pool which was there from the beginning is now unfortunately dry but will remain as a recreational space.
At the event it was sweet the very fine historian and genealogist, Michala Hulme, had discovered a great niece of Joe Sunlight, Marion Panayi. This lovely elderly lady was at the launch for a walk down memory lane. I wrote about Sunlight House and Joe here in a piece about a tower that was proposed and never built and then a new tower which has once again failed to materialise.
Myth-busting: Sunlight House wasn’t the first Manchester skyscraper
Every article and book says Sunlight House was Manchester’s first skyscraper and the tallest building in the city centre when it opened in 1932 with its 14 floors rising to 41m (135ft). This is odd because it clearly wasn’t. Ship Canal House opened in 1927 and is 46m (151ft). Manchester Town Hall opened in 1877 and its tower is 85m (280ft). It’s curious how a story gets repeated and then becomes the truth.
Heavenly drinking den opens
Here’s good news for spirit aficionados. Elysium is now welcoming customers on Princess Street with its superb collection of more than 300 whiskies (and whiskeys). There are also cocktails, wines and a whisky tasting room. For reference, Elysium sits between Rozafa Greek Restaurant, and the Waterhouse Wetherspoons on Princess Street. The operator and owner, Alan and Mark, previously at the Britons Protection have created the place from nothing, it was formerly a job recruitment office. Entertaining if not gainful employment can be had propping up the bar.
Chorlton food scene on the up
The Horse and Jockey Pub in Chorlton has been revitalized under the management of Neil Burke and Ben Chaplin of The Black Friar, Salford. It’s the first Joseph Holt pub to be managed by another company. It is quite exceptional. The up-to-date food features lots of British classics with the occasional Mediterranean flourish from talented head chef Paolo Bianchi whose career included a spell with Alain Ducasse at the Eiffel Tower.
The Horse and Jockey is immediately providing the best food of its type in a Manchester suburb. Chorlton’s got lucky. The proof of the pudding, if you forgive the pun, is its amazing popularity. The place has been packed most nights and has a lovely olde worlde low ceilinged atmosphere complete with real fires. It's in a fine location on Chorlton Green too. Have a gander at the menu and you can read Harley's review here.
Piccadilly symbiosis
I interviewed Manchester Council Leader, Bev Craig, about the proposed Piccadilly Gardens improvements recently. Strolling around the area and talking to some of the habitués can be depressing but there are some grim moments of humour. One shop on Piccadilly is called Smokers Paradise. Its neighbour is the British Heart Foundation charity shop. Not sure if one leads to another.
Leaf blowers and the Swiss
I was doing a tour with some Swiss people last week. One of the young women asked about the electoral system in the UK. I said we had national and local government elections and she said “But what about other issues? What about referendums?” I suggested we don’t do those very well. “We have lots of referendums,” she said. They really do.
Turns out the Swiss have February referendums and September referendums. In September there was a nationwide referendum about whether there should be electronic identity cards, a big debate in Britain of course. The majority was tiny which may sound familiar, 50.4% for and 49.6% against. Are such tiny majorities justification for changing the whole direction of national policy? I don’t think so.
In September in Zurich there was another referendum. This was to ban leaf blowers on the grounds of noise and pollution. “There was a big majority in favour,” said the young woman on the tour. They have whopping problems those Swiss, eh? Still, you have to agree with the decision. Leaf blowers are a useless indulgence.
While describing the Suffragette movement and Manchester the Swiss guests reminded me that women in Switzerland didn’t get the vote until 1971. In one canton, Appenzell Innerhoden it was as late as 1990. The only people voting in those referendums were men of course.
The best sculpture in the city centre?
For me this is Charles Jagger’s Sentry in Watts Warehouse, now the Britannia Hotel. In the remembrance month of November I think it’s worth reminding people about it, maybe go down and take a look. Don’t stay in the hotel though. It’s rubbish. You can read my description of the work here.
Stockport welcome
During a recent tour of Stockport I was conducting I stopped outside a very nondescript building in a car park opposite The Arden Arms to talk about that fabulous eighteenth century woman-of-all-trades Elizabeth Raffald. I was halfway through my spiel - fascinating naturally - when through the walls of this nondescript building a voice shouted, “Will you shut the f*** up!” It was 10.30 in the morning so not particularly early. The whole group started laughing and one local guest said: “Welcome to Stockport.”
The Mill and the BBC familiarisation trips
If you have any public profile in Manchester you’ll find yourself featured in The Mill at some point as did I with their story some weeks back about guiding in Manchester.
That aside, this intro to last week’s feature about the BBC moving to MediaCity was irritating.
‘In autumn of 2008, a fat coach full of London media moguls squeezed its way down Lapwing Lane, West Didsbury. Through scratched plexiglass they saw the sights: the deli, the candle shop, the solicitor and the skin doctor. They drove through Whalley Range to see Victorian villas. They bent heavily round the M60. “I realised they wanted to show [us] places that looked like Clapham, or Wimbledon,” one passenger now recalls (the “us” was initially “all these spoilt gentrified people from London,” but I’ve edited the quote to make it kinder). “I can’t remember if we went to North Manchester or not,” he says. “We might have gone to Prestwich.”’
The truth about the BBC familiarisations
It didn't happen like that in the slightest. I was the tour guide and trip organiser for the visits. What we usually did was drive through Castlefield, Whalley Range, Chorlton, the Didsburys, through Altrincham and Sale and then up to Ramsbottom. I wanted to show the guests a proper Pennine town. We returned down the east side, through those well-known glam spots of Clayton and Beswick, past Manchester City FC and then back into the city centre.
So, of course, since the aim was to get people to relocate we went through the ‘nice’ places but there was no shirking from other areas and I promise the commentary was, as agreed with the BBC, ‘warts and all’.
The guests weren't media moguls. Anything but. They were from all levels of the BBC, from office admin staff to presenters and producers. None of them were ‘media moguls’ and not all of them were from London. One wonders if the bitter, anonymous 'witness' calling people 'spoilt gentrified people from London' was even on the tours.
As for the ‘fat coach’ it was normal size and hadn’t put on any weight.
The writer, Ophira Gottlieb, could have just asked me about the tours but for reasons unknown didn’t.
The Mill does a lot of good stuff but two points.
I wish they wouldn’t keep telling us how good they are. It's pathetic, like a kid seeking approval. Also they shouldn’t lead with unattributed quotes as a hook for articles. They often have too many unattributed quotes inside their articles too. Bad journalism.
These are some upcoming tours from Jonathan Schofield.
Every Saturday: The Manchester Music Walkabout 1pm; The Manchester Pub Walkabout 3pm every Saturday Saturday 29 November: 10.30am Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx in Manchester Sunday 7 December: 10am Secrets of Stockport Saturday 13 December: NEW 10.30am Bombed and Besieged: Manchester at War
Also there are vouchers and deals for 2026 public tours. The list will be posted shortly. The vouchers make for great Christmas gifts.
Jonathan's books about the city may be purchased here.
