Updated proposals revealed for John Dalton House

An overhaul of John Dalton House in Manchester is back on the cards after updated plans were submitted for the building, due to be converted and extended for occupier QBIC Hotels.

Plans were first approved for the building in July 2016, with those proposals including a full re-clad and refurbishment, as well as a two-floor extension, to provide 215 hotel rooms along with retail and leisure space on the ground floor.

Leonardo Hotels was originally lined up as operator for the hotel, and a fresh planning application submitted this month suggests the operator will now be QBIC, which already has sites in Amsterdam and London and focusses on three and four-star-plus offerings.

The latest iterations of the plans increase the number of rooms from 215 to 261, adding two rooms per floor, while there are also proposals for a new basement gym, accessed via John Dalton Street.

The Bill’s restaurant on the ground floor will receive an updated frontage, while the former Byron Burger unit will be absorbed into the hotel’s front-of-house offering to enhance QBIC’s food and beverage offering.

Other changes since the original planning application include using the first floor for hotel rooms. The 2016 application had earmarked this area for a hotel bar, restaurant, and terrace.

Mulberry Square will also be enhanced with an additional entrance to the building. Both proposals have been designed by architect 5plus, and in total, the latest application will deliver 109,000 sq ft of hotel and associated space.

The professional team on the project includes Buro Four as project manager; Deloitte as planner; Arcadis as cost consultant; Layer as landscape architect; Cundall as M&E engineer; Hann Tucker Associates as acoustic engineer; Leslie Clark as principal designer; Shepherd Gilmour as consulting engineer; TPS as transport consultant; and Exova as fire engineer.

The updated proposals increase the number of hotel rooms from 215 to 261