Controversial city centre office complex set for massive redesign more than year after work started

A controversial office park set to be built in New Islington has undergone a huge redesign more than a year after initial work started.

Electric Park, to be built on New Islington Green, was set to be a campus of five new office buildings, three of them eight storeys high and two five storeys. It was also set to include two-and-a-half acres of green space open to the public — but the patch of grass around the tram stop it’s built on provided four acres of greenery to residents.

At the time, residents were opposed to its building, with Manchester council leader Bev Craig saying she could not block construction 'because I don’t own it'.

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She added: "We are really clear and able to do that, we’re able to say no. Much has been made of the planning processes, but actually planning policy nationally does not help cities like mine determine the things that we’d like — if a private landowner owns a piece of land and wants to develop that within something that’s legally permissible, there’s nothing we can do."

Initial preparatory work started on-site in September 2022, with a full construction project to follow. However, that work never got going in earnest — and it’s been revealed why today (January 4).

Developers General Projects has redesigned the scheme, which will still be workspaces. Some 350,000 sq ft will be built across the five buildings on the site, alongside ‘a substantial public amenity offer’ of restaurants, cafes, and two and a half acres of ‘high-quality public realm’ that it says will provide a 30 percent net gain in biodiversity in the area.

General Projects says it’s made the changes ‘following an evaluation of current