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FRESH START

Arndale Centre’s expansion brings new vibrancy to the heart of Manchester, England

By Sascha Brodsky

There was far too little time to evacuate the heart of Manchester, England, that day back in June 1996 when IRA terrorists called to say they were about to detonate a bomb there. The blast injured 220 people and destroyed much of Arndale Centre, in the main shopping district.

But the truth is, Manchester was already scarred by a combination of industrial decline and shabby 1960s-era redevelopment. Nearly a decade after the bomb, though, Arndale has opened the first phase of a $265 million redevelopment that management says demonstrates how much the city has recovered from both the bombing and past economic woes. In short, this redevelopment is part of an overall renewal plan for the city of 400,000, located about 180 miles northwest of London.

“This is a vision of a new, thriving center of town,” said Glen Barkworth, general manager of Arndale. There was no commemoration of the bombing at the opening of the expansion because “we want to look forward not back,” Barkworth said.

Instead, the focus was on a 300,000-square-foot expansion to the 1.1 million-square-foot center that includes Exchange Court, an airy public space with an almond-shaped glass roof and 75 retailers. The court is anchored by the largest Next store in the world, offering 250,000 items of clothing, gifts and housewares across three floors.

A new Nike flagship store fronts Exchange Court too, with Starbucks, Eat and a variety of snack bars and coffee shops giving shoppers a place to grab a bite.

Arndale, now owned by Prudential, was built in 1979 at a cost of $176 million. The name Arndale comes from the combination of the names of Arnold Hagenbach and Sam Chippindale, two developers who set up the Arndale Property Trust in 1960 and built a chain of centers.

Looking up
Two more expansion phases are scheduled, one to open in the spring and the other in the fall, each of which will add 200,000 square feet to the center. These will bring more than 30 additional tenants, including a Gap. The final phase will consist of a glass-roofed Winter Garden, some themed restaurants and coffee shops and a food market.

Arndale’s renovation comes just as the Manchester economy is on the upswing. Employment has grown at an average rate of 9,000 jobs per year since 1998, totaling 313,000 employed today, according to city officials. The number of registered job seekers has dropped by 13 percent over the past year alone. The number of small and medium-size businesses, meanwhile, has risen by 13 percent since 1998, a rate three times that of the surrounding region.

“This redevelopment drives forward Manchester’s continuing development as a world-class city, improving life for everyone who lives, works and does business here,” said Richard Leese, the Manchester City Council’s leader. “Investment in this area grows every year, and the city center is constantly expanding. Manchester is growing from strength to strength, thanks to strong partnerships between the public and the private sectors.”

In the beginning Arndale “catered to the lower end of the market,” said Robin Pinfield, director of London-based Chapman Taylor, which designed the expansion, but as Manchester’s economy has improved, the center “has become more about ‘aspirational’ shopping.” To accommodate more upscale retailers, Chapman Taylor designed larger store spaces.

Work on the redevelopment began in September 2003 with the partial demolition of the northern part of the center. Since then, over 1.2 million man-hours have been worked and 9,000 tons of steel hoisted into position to create the framework for the facade of limestone panels and glass.

Looking out
The design signals a new era for Arndale, which previously had a dowdy image, says Pinfield. He describes the center before the renewal as a “huge, inward-looking building with a yellow tile facade.”

The renovation was designed to “break down the mass of the building,” which presented “a monolithic structure that took up a huge part of the center of Manchester,” said Pinfield. “It’s about a sequence of spaces that are different from each other but are connected so that people don’t get confused about where they are.”

Says Barkworth, “We want to give the center a hard, edgy, urban look that showcases modern Manchester.”

Italian green marble has been used for flooring, and Jura limestone has been employed extensively on both the exterior and interior. The Exchange Court skylights and the glazing in the entrance allow natural light to flood into the center, and the glass also offers views of the city.

When Arndale was built, “shopping center design was very much about keeping people inside, closing them in and not giving them any indication of the time of day or the weather by giving them glimpses to the outside world,” said Jon Weymouth, Prudential’s shopping center development director. “That’s all changed, and Manchester Arndale has changed too. The center is now consciously more outward-looking in its relationship with the city center.”

And, as Barkworth put it, it’s strictly forward-thinking as well.