Roof installed at £25m Openshaw Campus
The 18,000 sq ft roof has been fitted at the centrepiece of LTE Group’s Manchester College redevelopment, an indoor sports hall, by contractor Caddick Construction.
Once complete, the facility is to house a six-court multi-discipline sports hall with viewing gallery and media suit equipped with match analysis technology. It will also have an outdoor pitch, gym and sports laboratory and is on schedule to open to students in the college’s Centre of Excellence for Sport this September.
The expansive roof over the indoor part of the facility took five weeks to successfully lower and secure it into place, according to Caddick, which is delivering the whole of the £25m regeneration of the Openshaw Campus in east Manchester and started construction at the site last July.
As well as the sports component, the plans to revamp Openshaw include a health suite with hospital ward and infectious disease area for healthcare students, workshops for construction, mechanics and engineering students, a mock nursery setting for students studying Childhood Studies, and a motor vehicle learning facility.
Ellis Williams Architects designed the Openshaw redevelopment, which is part of the £140m first stage of The Manchester College owner LTE’s ongoing estates strategy to “transform the college’s Manchester’s education and training delivery locations over the [ensuing] two years”.
LTE has continued to see “an increase in demand for regional training and skills” since the plans were designed by architect Reiach & Hall in 2019, it said this week. The company is now well underway in the process of consolidating its disparate estate, by disposing of some of its ageing assets and building new ones. Last month, it appointed Cushman & Wakefield to market the 6.5-acre Fielden Campus off Barlow Moor Road in West Didsbury.
The Fielden Campus comprises 60,000 sq ft of educational buildings ranging in height from two to six storeys.
LTE chief executive John Thornhill said: “Investing in our Openshaw Campus is just one element of our investment into new facilities, which includes the new, five-storey city centre campus currently under construction next to the AO Arena in Manchester city centre, which will open to students September 2022.
“Investment at this level across multiple locations provides valuable opportunities for future students, ultimately providing a skilled workforce for the Greater Manchester region.”
“The roof going on smoothly was a major milestone for the team and it was completed on schedule, despite the Manchester climate pretty much throwing everything at us,” added Ian Threadgold, managing director of Caddick Construction’s North West office.
“The facility is really starting to take shape now and it will offer the very latest training and educational opportunities for students arriving back in September.”
