Plans for 200 more rooms at Victoria Warehouse hotel

The proposal for the ‘island site’ in the shadow of Manchester United’s Old Trafford stadium also includes a seven-storey car park. It goes before Trafford’s planning committee on Thursday April 11.

Victoria Warehouse is made up of two large detached warehouse buildings scaling four and six storeys, known as the eastern and western warehouses, and a central two-storey arena which is used as a concert venue.

The plans also include a roof terrace for the eastern warehouse and the ‘reconfiguration’ of the second and first floors of the western warehouse for corporate event space. 

There will also be a glazed extension to the roof, also with a terrace, a new glazed entrance, external lifts and other internal and external alterations.

In addition, a new roof in the existing event space in the central warehouse and solar panels are part of the plan submitted applicant Adam Geoffrey Management Ltd.

A report to the committee describes the Victoria Warehouse as a ‘significant music, leisure and conference destination of national importance’.

But it goes on: “That being the case, parts of the site are under-utilised and the full capacity of the 2012 planning permission has not been achieved.

“For example, the number of hotel rooms in the eastern warehouse is considerably lower at 42 and only the ground and first floors of the western warehouse are in active use.”

A design and access statement from Drinkwater Architects, says the venue currently operates as ‘a culturally important and popular leisure and conference destination’ which can accommodate 5,400 people and a hotel.

The three main buildings on the site were built in four phases between 18909 and 1932. The site was subject to bomb damage during the Manchester Blitz in the early 19402 and parts of it had to be rebuilt or repaired, including the arena building which may originally have been a taller structure.