Help shape our vision for the Albert Bridge House site
Welcome
Oval Real Estate is bringing forward plans to redevelop Albert Bridge House and the adjoining car park to help realise the potential of this important gateway site in Manchester City Centre.
Below, you’ll find information about the site and the existing buildings that currently occupy it, our redevelopment proposals, the consultation process and our next steps.
Our plans include replacing the existing buildings on the site with two new landmark buildings. The first of these would provide modern office space within a highly sustainable building, designed to meet the needs of a range of occupiers, alongside ground floor space for commercial and retail uses. The second would be a stylish residential tower, providing 367 new homes in a range of sizes, supported by communal amenity space.
Introducing Oval
Real Estate
We develop, manage and invest in buildings throughout the UK across every sector.
Specialising in spaces sometimes overlooked, our mission is to leave buildings and neighbourhoods in better shape than we found them.
We place a big emphasis on design and put our own stamp on every building. Tapping into expertise from outside the property sector, we consider everything our occupiers and visitors see, hear and touch.
You can find out more about Oval by visiting our website:
The Site Today
It is currently home to an 18-storey office building occupied by HMRC and the adjoining car park and land, including Albert Bridge Gardens.
The proposed site was referenced in the 2020 Strategic Regeneration Framework (SRF) for St Mary’s Parsonage as providing a key opportunity for redevelopment.
Why not reuse the existing building?
At Oval, we are committed to renovating and retrofitting old buildings. While that is always our starting point, Albert Bridge House doesn’t offer the potential for a successful renovation.
Albert Bridge House was purpose-built in the 1950s as a tax office, and was not designed with long-term sustainability in mind. Put simply, its layout and design just don’t meet modern office occupier requirements.
We are also keen to re-engage the site with river frontage behind Albert Bridge House. As it stands, the existing layout of the building turns its back on the river, and its retention would ultimately restrict the opportunity to open up the site and improve connections through it.
Our Proposals for Albert Bridge House
A dynamic, sustainable place designed to realise the potential of this gateway location.
Our proposals include:
A landmark ’best-in-class’ sustainable new office building, providing flexible workspace for a range of occupiers in response to increasing demand in this area of the city centre
A stylish new residential tower providing 367 new homes of a range of different sizes, supported by communal amenity space
Ground floor retail/food & beverage to activate the surrounding area
Attractive and welcoming new public space
New pedestrian routes and connections through the site, including enhanced access to the river
Further information about the proposals can be found on our consultation event boards, which can be viewed by clicking below.
Public consultation
As part of the consultation, we presented information about the proposals at a drop-in event at the Lowry Hotel (50 Dearmans Pl, Salford M3 5LH) on Tuesday 27 September 2022.
All of the information that was displayed at the event is available to view here.
Although our online feedback form has now closed, if you have any questions you can still get in touch via email: consult@albertbridgehouse-mcr.com.
After carefully considering feedback to the the consultation, we submitted a planning application for our plans in January 2023.
The application can be viewed by visiting Manchester City Council’s planning portal. The reference number for the application is 135834/FO/2022.
The consultation on our plans for Albert Bridge House was open from Wednesday 21 September to Sunday 9 October 2022.
Next steps
On Thursday 1 June 2023, Manchester City Council’s Planning Committee approved our plans to redevelop the Albert Bridge House site on Bridge Street, giving us the green light to create a highly sustainable, mixed-use destination in Manchester city centre.
James Craig, Founding Partner of Oval Real Estate, said:
“We are delighted that Manchester City Council’s Planning Committee has backed our plans and entrusted us to create a thriving and inclusive new destination for Manchester city centre.
“With sustainability at the heart of our plans, we are very excited to transform this currently grey and concrete-dominated site into a green, welcoming new neighbourhood, complete with biodiversity-rich public spaces and a new River Walk, as well as cascading green terraces on our unique new office building.
“Over the last few months, we have worked closely with a range of stakeholders – including adjacent landowners and the local community – to develop our plans. St Mary’s Parsonage is a burgeoning part of the city centre with lots of exciting plans for the future. We look forward to continuing to work together to make this vision a reality.
“While this is an excellent milestone, we know we have a lot of hard work ahead of us. We are working towards the demolition of the existing buildings on site later in the year and look forward to sharing further updates about development timescales in the next few months.”