Vinoly + Manchester City's Domination

Manchester City Football Club and Vinoly Architects submitted a planning application to Manchester City Council yesterday for a new Training Academy. Positioned on 80 acres of brownfield and industrial land, the scheme looks to put MCFC at the centre of English Football development. 

The site will include 14 full size training pitches and a new 7,000 seated stadium for the youth teams. They have also allocated upto 5.5 acres for community lead schemes, including the possibility of an education facility.

Copyright of MCFC

The vast cash injection and sudden growth happening over at the Etihad stadium is the start of something big in the East of Manchester. Over the decades as Salford has flourished into a secondary centre of Manchester in the west, it appears that now is the time for the east to finally succeed and expand, competing with the city centre and Salford as a destination. 

As Alsops master plan in Ancoats still seeks it's success you wonder whether the expansion at MCFC will help sandwich it in, positioning it within the centre, rather than the edge where it currently sits. There is also the very quiet BDP Master plan for the further context in and around the stadium. Their scheme is still to be seen but the massive overhaul of a leisure lead development can only change the future urban grain of the city.

Can a city work well with 3 key destinations, or will they begin to merge, blurring the lines between the areas, expanding what is deemed the "centre", and becoming the catalyst that turns Manchester into the city of Greater Manchester, a new Mega-City. Built to rival that of London and Paris, even as far as New York. The city of the future.

Las Vegas Comes To Manchester

Manchester in Las Vegas

According to some sources Manchester may soon be home to an enormous Leisure centre that would rival the extravagance of Las Vegas. It would be built in the immediate context of the Manchester City Football Stadium, by none other than Manchester City Football Clubs billionaire owner Sheikh Mansour. Included in the plan, said to be designed by BDP, will be luxurious Hotels, a Theme Park, and not forgetting a Casino.

The idea appears to be somewhat ridiculous for a British city, and seems more suited for the United Arab Emirates or USA, not in an area most famous for it's Victorian Industry. However one only has to look back 2 years to the proposed "Super Casino", that was eventually sacked by the government, to see that this rumour may indeed be true, and with the backing of a mutli-billionaire who has already spent well over £100million on new football players, that building up the area around the stadium is such a large leap of faith in the owner's eyes.

Ancoats Emptiness

The news is fairly disheartening, does Manchester want to become an Americanised city, is it right for one football club owner to spread his influence outside of the grounds and into the local community? Perhaps it will create a solution for the sparse state that Ancoats currently resides in, or will it sit on the landscape as an empty shed, unused and unloved.

All images Copyright of Jack Penford Baker