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Heritage works in a city centre location posed a number of challenges for our team in the North West as they transformed the iconic Corn Exchange into a four-star boutique aparthotel.
Dating back to 1903, the Corn Exchange sits in one of the busiest shopping areas in Manchester with 13 live brands on the ground floor. Given its location and proximity to the Metrolink, lean project management, community engagement and comprehensive logistics planning was paramount to the project’s success.
The teams worked around the clock to uncover the building’s former grandeur, completing the project on time and budget, to create Manchester’s latest ‘must stay’ hotel.
We delivered a full turnkey solution for the refurbishment and fit out of floors 2-5, which included significant structural alterations to the building’s floor slabs, and the refurbishment of the building’s chimneys and lead roof.
The building’s period features, including sash windows, architecturally-listed stair cores and ornate tiling, were revived to complement and enhance Roomzzz’s ‘heritage’ design concept.
The hotel now boasts a gym, lounge and a ‘Grab and Go’ breakfast area, and several management suites. While the stylish layout features a striking combination of existing brick walls and new partitioning to create four room types, from ultra-modern apartments to luxurious and palatial penthouses – all of which incorporate a fully-equipped kitchen.
Given the site’s location, sequencing material deliveries was a vital component of the job.
Surrounded by pedestrian areas, and with live restaurants on the ground floor and all around the building, we could not use existing goods lifts to bring up materials or restrict access to the lower floors or concourse.
We came up with a hoist design to move materials up to the second, third and fourth floors, using a small footprint at the building’s base. This left the windows as the only access points for all the site’s materials, both coming in and going out. The largest of these windows, on the third and second floors, are 1.7 m high and 1.2 m wide.
“The ISG team at Corn Exchange have delivered a high-quality refurbishment project in a challenging city centre environment. They have overcome considerable access and logistical issues on the scheme and have achieved noteworthy social value successes.”
Jon Munce, director, Queensberry Real Estate
As part of ISG’s ambition to leave a lasting legacy in the communities it works in, we achieved the following:
