Amazon confirms Manchester move
Amazon has announced its long-rumoured move to the Hanover Building in Manchester’s Noma, taking 90,000 sq ft in an office home to around 600 staff.
Place North West first reported the online retail giant was homing in on Hanover House as its Manchester base in May this year and the company has now completed its deal to open its first UK corporate office outside London at the building.
Around 600 staff will be based there, including software development, machine learning, and research and development teams.
Hanover House has undergone a comprehensive £34m refurbishment by contractor Russells and designed by Sheppard Robson, and provides 90,000 sq ft of offices along with 18,000 sq ft of retail and leisure at ground floor level. Cushman & Wakefield acted for Amazon on the deal, while JLL and Colliers are the agents on Hanover.
Amazon’s long-rumoured move was codenamed ‘Project Oasis’ and had been ongoing for more than a year. Early contenders for the space were Hanover and No8 First Street, but the latter was ruled out due to delays to its completion date. No8 is also now nearly full, with Gazprom, WSP, and Odeon all taking space in the building.
Other options previously rumoured for Amazon’s requirement included One St Peter’s Square, but this building is filling up with Irwin Mitchell the latest to sign up for 33,000 sq ft. Other tenants include CBRE, WeWork, KPMG, DLA Piper, Addleshaw Goddard, and Mazars.
Doug Gurr, UK country manager at Amazon said: “With the UK taking a leading role in the global tech, we are delighted to announce plans to open a new corporate office in the city. Our new office will be home to over 600 staff, many of whom will be focused on developing exciting new products and services used by Amazon customers around the world.
“The city offers an incredibly talented workforce and a budding tech scene with some of the most exciting, fast-growing tech companies in the UK situated here.”
As well as the new Manchester office, the online retail giant also confirmed plans to expand its development centres in both Edinburgh and Cambridge in a move that will create more than 400 new jobs.
Fantastic news from Manchester and will really help the city expand. Just jealous it’s not in Liverpool!
By Derek
Why be jealous? Manchester has put the years of work on, and now this is the kind of stuff that just falls off the shovel for them.
If us Liverpudlians should feel anything, it’s anger because there is no reason why our city shouldn’t be in just a good a position. The city has been so badly led, it just doesn’t figure.
This is a good example of what we’re now missing as a result. It’s hard for me to imagine we’ll ever now see anything like it.
By Mike
Mike, spot on.
Every time I go to Manchester I can not help but think what could of been. Unfortunately the city is rotten to the core in terms of leadership.
By Sean
Mike, I don’t disagree with you. It was just a light hearted comment really. It’s great news anyway for Manchester.
By Derek
More than a little ironic that this is announced on the day Kendals closes on Deansgate. Of course Amazon and their, apparently untaxable, business model are not the only reason for the demise of trad department store retailing but they are part of the problem. OK..so these are decent replacement jobs and retailers have to change to compete. but it isn’t a level playing field.
By Sceptic
Why are people celebrating jobs being created by a company which doesn’t pay its fair share of tax and employs huge numbers of people on morally dubious contracts (eg. zero hours)? Honest taxpayers, both individuals and companies, are indirectly paying for Amazon’s business model and subsiding their apparent ‘success’.
By MancLad