Council to hold special meeting on Library Walk plans

Article published: Tuesday, September 18th 2012

Controversial plans to gate off and glaze Library Walk are to be debated in a specially scheduled gathering of Manchester City Council’s top local politicians ahead of a crunch planning meeting.

The council’s executive, its chief decision making body, will meet on Wednesday afternoon to discuss the plans as part of a major redesign of Manchester’s St Peter’s Square.

Officials are asking councillors to agree recommendations to erect bronze gates across Library Walk, which will be locked at night, and insert a £3.5 million glazed pod linking the Central Library and the Town Hall Extension. Approval of the scheme would have a crucial bearing on future planning decisions in the area.

Hundreds of people have signed a petition against the plans for the city centre thoroughfare, which opponents have decried as a de facto privatisation of public space and an unwarranted blockage of a distinctive and much-loved element of Manchester’s streetscape.

Up to 50 people demonstrated in opposition at a vigil last week attended by senior local politician and town hall city centre spokesperson Councillor Pat Karney. Both Labour Party city centre councillors, Kevin Peel and Joan Davis, have also come out against the Library Walk plans.

Council officials stick by the scheme however, recommending the endorsement of a key report describing Library Walk as “a threatening pedestrian route” with “no active uses”. While acknowledging it as “a unique space of grand scale and distinctive form”, the proposals from Ian Simpson’s Architects argue the plans are a necessary component of the wider redesign of St Peter’s Square.

Designers say the physical above ground linking of the Central Library and Town Hall Extension, which will host shared services once their £170m revamp is finished, is needed to improve ease of access and provide the buildings with a visible common entrance onto a pedestrianized and wholly redesigned St Peter’s Square. An underground link between the two already forms part of the development.

Local politicians hope the radical “Civic Quarter” revamp of the area will create “a wide, open urban square which celebrates the architecture of surrounding buildings” and prove an attractive advert of Manchester to global investors.

If the plans are approved then their recommendations will have to be taken into account at a future Planning and Highways Committee meeting to decide the future of Library Walk on 25 October.

Richard Goulding

View the full St Peter’s Square proposals here.

Manchester City Council’s Executive will meet to discuss the plans at 1.30pm on Wednesday 19 September, and the Planning and Highways Committee will decide whether or not to grant permission for the Library Walk “glazed link” on Thursday 25 October. Both take place in Manchester Town Hall and all members of the public can attend.

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Comments

1. everyone i talk to about this , is totally against it.. we are losing to much of our iner city character…+ the cost..if its not broke don’t fix it…

   Comment by tom nolan on September 18, 2012 at 10:35 am

2. Well they can’t just ignore a disgruntled public.
   Mr Simpson and the council would do well to remember, “people who live in glass houses always have to answer the door.”

   Comment by sarah on September 18, 2012 at 10:13 pm

3. “Well they can’t just ignore a disgruntled public.” ???!!! Just you watch. “Consultation” won’t change anything significant. It is undertaken for ‘governance’ [sic] purposes, not ‘cos they want to listen to you. The more they “consult”, the more their backsides are covered if anything does go wrong with their plan.

   Comment by The Dodger on September 24, 2012 at 12:48 pm

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