Launching a new chapter for Carver’s Warehouse
As part of Manchester City Council’s ‘100 Days Celebration’, Council Leader Sir Richard Leese has paid tribute to the restoration of Manchester’s oldest surviving stone warehouse by officially launching the building which demonstrates the successful, sustainable re-use of part of Manchester’s heritage.Residing within the Town Centre Securities’ £250M Piccadilly Basin regeneration development, Carver’s Warehouse has undergone a complete restoration to create 5 floors of sustainable working space. Continuing the developer’s commitment to the Piccadilly Partnership’s 2008 focus on improving the public realm in Piccadilly, the atrium in Carver’s Warehouse is also being utilised as public art space. First completed in 1806, Carver’s Warehouse forms part of the office offering at the 12.8 acre Piccadilly Basin site which, through the additional residential and retail offering at the scheme, is being transformed into one of Manchester’s most exciting mixed use developments, breathing new life into the Piccadilly area.
Sir Richard Leese says; “The 100 Days Celebration is an annual event run by Manchester City Council from the 14th February to the 24th May and the focus for 2008 is ‘100 days to a cleaner, greener City’. We were keen to include the Carver’s Warehouse project within our celebrations to commend the great sustainability lengths taken to restore one of Manchester’s most interesting buildings back to its former glory.”
Due to its complexity, the restoration process has generated such great interest that the developers, Town Centre Securities along with project engineers and Carver’s new tenants, Martin Stockley Associates, produced the book to document the project. Chairman of Town Centre Securities, Edward Ziff, presented the predominantly pictorial book, entitled ‘Carver’s Warehouse’ at the official opening of the building. Mr Ziff also unveiled the art exhibition space within Carver’s Warehouse which is currently exhibiting the work of photographer Len Grant who took the collection of photographs for the Carver’s Warehouse book.
Chairman of Town Centre Securities, Edward Ziff, continues; “The restoration of Carver’s Warehouse has been an incredibly intricate and interesting process and it is for this reason that we wanted to produce the book to share our development journey. There are no hard and fast rules for a restoration project of this magnitude and the challenges were in the requirement to achieve sustainability by only doing work that is necessary to allow the building to perform its function properly. The team worked with a light hand to keep the natural character and quirks of the building with the end result being a truly unique working environment for our tenants, Marketing Manchester and Martin Stockley Associates.
“It is entirely fitting that we launch the building as part of the Council’s 100 Days Celebration. Through our work on projects such as Carver’s Warehouse we are demonstrating our commitment to making Manchester a greener city and will continue this development agenda with future schemes.”