The Corn Exchange became a crazy emporium of leftfield shops. Affleck’s Palace and the Craft and Design Centre opened. The notion of there ever being an empty shop unit on King Street or St Ann’s Square would have been laughed at - look at the pictures on this page. While Oldham Street slipped, the Arndale Centre and Market Street got busier every year. Some elements of city life were much better than 2018. Retail was far healthier in the 1980s than in the present Amazon age. What dreams did those people have? And do they still have them?'įortunately as the 80s progressed it was becoming clear we did. As examples of frozen energy they fill you with amazement. One writer Charles Jencks put it this way when viewing that older city: 'Look again at those buildings. The top picture here shows a surface car park where the National Football Museum presently sits, it shows a wasteland. The 80s was the period of maximum contraction of the city centre when it became a shadow of its nineteenth century self. These were disastrous non-entities that still blight what should be, but is nowhere near, our finest civic space. The worst of the worst, because of the location, was the apologetic, ugly and unambitious duo of Heron House and Commercial Union House facing the Town Hall. It’s hard to bring to mind a single good new building aside from Siemens House by Mills, Beaumont, Leavey on Princess Parkway. Unfortunately new architecture during the decade was appalling. By the mid-80s the area was being transformed with offices, houses and flats, although it would take the best part of two decades for the redevelopment to begin to mature. Over in Salford an Enterprise Zone was created at the redundant headwaters of Manchester Ship Canal. Although Mackie Mayor, the Cat Cafe and Ziferblat seemed a very long and very unimaginable way off. Along Whitworth Streets, the packing warehouses were also becoming flats. Even the rundown ex-markets area around High Street gained a sniff of a hint of future gentrification when Peter O'Grady's team opened the Market Restaurant. The Museum of Science and Industry opened in 1983 and Castlefield was dragged back to active life.įor the first time in almost a century city centre living was being created with flats on top of the Arndale Centre, and in townhouses in St John's and off Tib Street. The creation of the Central Manchester Development Corporation in 1988 started to deliver renovation in the former warehouse areas and canal basins. Chinatown came into its own during the decade and the Gay Village became a reality. There were many physical changes in the 80s, such as when the shattered and abandoned Central Station was converted into the Greater Manchester Exhibition Centre (now Manchester Central) in 1982.

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