'This will be an antidote to all the development going on in Manchester'
09.06.2024 - 06:39
/ manchestereveningnews.co.uk
The latest skyscraper addition to Manchester city centre is called Viadux, and it neighbours Beetham Tower.
At 40-storeys-tall, it’s not the city’s tallest — it has seven fewer than its neighbour, and 24 fewer than the highest tower in Manchester, Deansgate Square South Tower. And, should Viadux 2 be built, it will have roughly half the floor count — as the proposed second Viadux skyscraper will have 76 storeys, and be the UK’s tallest building outside of London.
But Viadux’s close location to Beetham Tower, which once stood alone as the second city’s only true skyscraper, is emblematic of just how much building has gone on in town. Its location means it also looms over the Castlefield Viaduct — the city’s temporary sky-park which opened two years ago.
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Now, plans are afoot to extend the fledgling park as an ‘antidote’ to the development that encircles it.
At present, the park covers about half the historic 330m viaduct.
But a National Trust project hopes to ultimately extend the park as far as 1km, by creating green areas on existing, adjoining viaducts used by trams heading out to Salford and Trafford.
While that is the long-term ambition, the National Trust says it now has enough funding to extend the existing park along the rest of Castlefield viaduct, half of which is currently derelict. Should a planning application be approved this summer, building work will start on phase two, as it’s called, next year.
However, the far bigger ‘vision’ will see the sky park extend beyond the historic viaduct — built in 1892 to carry freight trains to the Great Northern Warehouse by the same engineers behind the Blackpool Tower — and