Planned Skyscraper To Be Manchester’s Tallest Tower Yet

If ever there was a time for construction staff to invest in waterproof work shoes, it will be when working in rainy Manchester, something many thousands have been doing in the city’s construction boom of recent years.

While there may be talk of a recession the buildings keep going up faster than the precipitation comes down, with proposals being published for the latest building to reach for the clouds.

Developer Renaker has unveiled plans for what will be the tallest skyscraper yet built in the city, alongside the other towers of its great Jackson Street cluster. Like its immediate neighbours it has been designed by SimpsonHaugh architects. 

If planning permission is granted, the building will be 213 metres (700 ft tall), eclipsing the 201 m (659 ft) Deansgate Square Tower A as the loftiest building in the city, a mantle the former structure only assumed in 2018.

Measuring 71 storeys in height, it will be one of four new skyscrapers, all residential buildings, which will add another 2,388 apartments to the city centre’s flourishing residential market.

Not everyone is delighted with this surge of skyscraper construction. Some have suggested the cluster consists of buildings that look too alike, although The Blade and the cylindrical Three60 add some variation.

Whatever the debates about the aesthetics or even the principle of making Manchester look increasingly like Manhattan, the skyscraper boom is certainly providing plenty of construction sector jobs at a time when the economy is in a difficult situation.

The speed of Manchester’s skyward ascent can be seen with the rapidity with which the title of tallest building is changing. The 387 ft CIS Building, Manchester’s first modern skyscraper, was built in 1962 and reigned unchallenged until the 554 ft Beetham Tower overtook it in 2005. 

Completed in 2006, the Beetham Tower had 12 years of being the highest, much longer than Tower A in Deansgate Square looks likely to enjoy.