[Closed] The Cornerhouse- Manchester. Please visit it. One more time before its gone

Real pity for me, I work at MMU, and it is a great spot for a quiet coffee during the day. Also, I'm going to miss being able to see films after work that actually interest me.

What? Why's it going?

Manchester council have 'new tenants'.

Its going to be a hotel/apartments etc.

Down the road theres another new hotel build going up. just how many hotels and apartments does Manchester need? After all alot of the apartments are sub-letted, letted out as apartment hire.

What the **** are they doing to Manchester? Yes its got a new home. A new build. Yet another new build.

When they tear out the old Coroners office/firestation in Picadilly and make it into a hotel (its inevitable if the train linkup happens). Then I'm off. Sick of the destruction but council-types.

gozarch - Member
What? Why's it going?

Don't freak out - they have a new place already, it's been on the cards for months now: [url= http://homemcr.org/ ]http://homemcr.org/[/url]

Manchester City Council are cultural vandals! They know the price of everything, and the value of nothing! They didn't give a toss when they demolished the Hacienda to build yet more bloody flats. And the same with the Cornerhouse.

They seem absolutely clueless as to what makes the city what it is. Because it sure the **** isn't another block of anonymous flats. They won't realise what they've lost until its all gone.

The whole city centre has been sanitised. If you walk around town now, you can see all the independent shops are being priced out of the centre, and its just the same identikit chains.

Depressing

Don't freak out - they have a new place already

See what binners says. ^^

Would you tear down a beautiful Victorian house and put up a new Wimpy house as its new innit and presents better 'value and space to the user'?

So are they pulling down the actual cornerhouse, or just that bit in the second photo?
If so, then I'm with Binners and Hora. That's the one part of that bit of town that gives the place a lift.

Both. Possibly I can see the one storey cinema as a sacrificial lamb. Not both though.

That's a real shame. Lots of memories from that place when I was blagging being cultured to impress women.

Agreed to some extent, cornerhouse is great but the new build will offer great space and facilities, in theory, and the options for new cultural experiences. In Theory.

I would have kept the corner house building with the small screens just for the intimacy of the venue it is an experience.

I remember in the 1980s the building and its occupancy........

I'll miss the Cornerhouse being the first thing you get to when you get off the train from the sticks. The new gaff is just around the corner and looks promising. Different, but promising.

I agree, its been an icon of alternative cinema for as long as I've been around Manchester , somewhere to see films you don't see elsewhere [ and you can take your coffee in with you ] ,it's just a sadness to see the building change it's use .

[url= http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/rock-music-venue-roadhouse-closes-8876455 ]Even worse news... Roadhouse closes.[/url]

The last film I saw here was Senna. I'll get another one in before.

You're a regular visitor then! 🙂

You're a regular visitor then!

I drink coffee in there alot 😀

Down the road theres another new hotel build going up. just how many hotels and apartments does Manchester need?

There was an initiative started in the early 90's, as part of generally turning Manchester's fortunes around, of making the city more lived in and of creating a '24hr city'. I was actually at the launch of several of the strands for it back then and it was very much an across the board - conferences and seminars where you had planners,the education authority, arts organisations, DJs, environmentalists, and so on, all at the same table figuring out how the city should move forward.

Many cities at the time were deserts in the evening. At the time I lived in Brum when I first moved there I lived really centrally - practically in the shadow of the town hall and library and imagined being that central would be convenient. It was a total pain in the arse. I was only one of about about couple of hundred of us living in the city itself. After 6 o'clock and the workers going home everything around us shops, pubs, restaurants, takeaways were shut. Brum was a 9-5 city. I had to commute out to the suburbs in the evening to shop and socialise.

So Manchester has been working pretty hard are re-populating the city centre and the city being somewhere that has more diverse economy and one thats round the clock.

"So Manchester has been working pretty hard are re-populating the city centre and the city being somewhere that has more diverse economy and one thats round the clock."

They are still making a massive mess of the place doing it though. No thought to the past and history of Manchester unless its obvious. That area of Manchester once contained several buildings that were pretty impressive. Also it has an interesting historical past for the city.

I'd just like to point out that I remember the Cornerhouse as a furniture shop and that cinema building as the place to see crap mucky films. Spent many hours trying to blag guitars from Barrets next door as well as wasting time in A1 music. It should also be noted by some that the Hacienda building was a Victorian office/warehouse before the International Marine that it would make a great Yacht showroom, hence the floors missing that made it suitable for a club. The good old days I suppose.

PS Johnny Roadhouse's place was a total dump. An he'd give you bugger all for your stuff.

Edit, oops wrong road house, really showing me age.

the drummer in my last band works there, and all of the staff are absolutely gutted that they're having to move to a soulless new location from the current spot. it's a disgrace.

Manchester is crying out for hotel beds for football games and hen doos tell him.

The soulless bit has to be seen...yet understand the apprehension. It would be ideal to keep both, and people/staff/installations make the atmosphere.

What irks me is the planning that goes into 'identi-kit' cities, all are becoming homogenised into recognisable safe zones ...not about criminal activity....but of corporations and brands, I know that so I will go there.

Manchester has enough property areas to build on or in without reclaiming the cornerhouse, it should be remember that the cornerhouse reclaimed the area from

I'd just like to point out that I remember the Cornerhouse as a furniture shop and that cinema building as the place to see crap mucky films

and to escape from the mall/maul of the arndale

the opportunity to do that in these days are much harder and a greater loss to the vibrancy of the city

There was an initiative started in the early 90's, as part of generally turning Manchester's fortunes around, of making the city more lived in and of creating a '24hr city'. I was actually at the launch of several of the strands for it back then and it was very much an across the board - conferences and seminars where you had planners,the education authority, arts organisations, DJs, environmentalists, and so on, all at the same table figuring out how the city should move forward.

agreed and was happening after Leeds really pioneered this late 80s/ but failed to capitialise on the initial thoughts and possibly now needs to happen again in Manchester to see how the city wants to develop in the next twenty years.

I'm presently working in Spinningfields. Its absolutely hideous. The whole place is a huge glass and chrome mausoleum. A soulless shrine to money and pretention, utterly devoid of any vestige of humanity. A yawning vacuum of a place that sucks the spirit out of you the second you enter it.

I ****ing loathe it with every fibre of my being.If this is progress, you can keep it!

Theres shedloads of empty brownfield sites in central Manchester.

Someone got bunged otherwise how did the idea come about to build on a rail station on an existing vibrant/high profile usage space?

It seems a real mistake to move it.

The advantage of the Cornerhouse being where it is is that you get a pretty broad range of people going there- it's a great place to meet people before heading out to a club or get a quick bit of food or just spend the night drinking. It's in an ideal spot for this kind of passing trade and for this reason you get an awful lot of people in there that would ordinarily never set foot in an 'arthouse' cinema. I know this is definitely the case with a fair few of my friends and it always seemed like a real success that this happened.

Even though the new building isn't far down the road I really can't see them re-creating this element again- I expect that it was unique to the Oxford Road location and that's why it seems to me it will lose some of it's soul.

crazy