14-03-2025
Huge new plans for Mayfield Park revealed
Nearly 900 flats could be built around Mayfield Park in a huge regeneration of the neighbourhood - which also expands green space.
Mayfield Park was hailed as the city centre's first new green space in more than a century.
Previously, it was unloved wasteland sandwiched between the Mancunian Way, Mayfield Depot, and Piccadilly Station, largely used for warehousing until its closure in 2018.
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The hope for Mayfield is it will become 'a go-to destination in the city for locals and visitors', centred around the park.
Developers Landsec always maintained the green oasis was just the start of transforming the area — and the newly-submitted planning application confirms their ambition for the next few years.
'Since opening the park in 2022, we've been on a mission to continue to grow Mayfield, so it really feels like you're working and living in a park," Mike Hood, from developer Landsec, said.
"This opportunity doesn't exist in Manchester, so we want to change that.
'The proposed expansion of green space in this first phase, with homes alongside workplaces, is extremely exciting.
'It's easy to forget much of this part of the city was disused, derelict and unloved just a few years ago.'
Now final details of the proposals have been confirmed.
Four apartment blocks are planned for Mayfield, which will contain 879 homes in total. They will be seven, nine, 23, and 28 storeys tall and have been designed by shedkm, the firm behind the Kampus development.
Plans show the 287 one-bedroom apartments, 545 two beds, and 47 three beds are all listed for 'market housing'. But Landsec added it has 'an ambition to deliver 20pc affordable housing across the new urban district', pending a 'viability appraisal' to 'determine the levels of affordable housing provision for the site'.
Residents will be able to get home via a 'new 180-metre, plant-lined street' running parallel to Mancunian Way, which developers argue will 'improve walking and cycle connectivity to, and from, the city centre and east Manchester'.
Development will also increase the size of the park, from six-and-a-half acres to 10, plant 123 new trees, and install new seating areas.
A rock garden and water features are being touted as new highlights of the expanded Mayfield Park, which has a popular play park with seven slides — one of which runs across the River Irk, which was uncovered as the industrial estate was converted into luscious green space.
The project will build 325,000 sq ft of offices for thousands of staff, and 60,000 sq ft of retail space, following the first Mayfield building.
Work on that office block, called the Republic, is set to begin in 2025. A second workspace and a transport hub, which will feature the city's biggest bicycle parking hub, will start soon after.
