Manchester University Owens Park’s £200m refurbishment
Last year a draft master plan was agreed by a development company, run by Manchester City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak, to rejuvenate accommodation campus Owens Park and create a new ‘student village’. The £200 million facelift is set to house an extra 1,000 students, as well as providing many new facilities and amenities.
Part of this plan includes knocking down bedraggled but beloved OP Tower, as well as 80 mature trees and other halls buildings. The new student village is expected to provide 150 parking spaces, a doctor’s surgery, shops, and a new student services surgery.
Owens Park is Manchester University’s main residential site, and was completed in 1966. Once home to Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien and comedian Jack Whitehall, the Owens Park Tower, standing at 200 feet, dominates the Fallowfield landscape. Other plans to demolish the tower have been suggested in the past; the first plan was put forward in 2001 to knock down the tower by 2004. However, this was abandoned after multiple protests by previous and current residents ….