Serves Its Purpose (Arndale Centre)

Name: zoe_page_1

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Product:	Arndale Centre
Date:	07.10.01 (786 review reads)
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Many years ago (ok, about 2) I loved shopping. I would shop every day of the week given half the chance, and never tired of it. Then something changed – I moved to Manchester and got a new job. In a shop. Suddenly the last thing I wanted to do at weekends after finishing work was go into yet more shops, and since I was supposed to be in lectures Monday to Friday this I basically didn’t shop for a year. Or shop *properly* at least – I still had food and books and CDs and presents delivered from the internet, but I managed to set foot in very few shops.

I went away from the summer and did way too much shopping, and now that I’m back in Manchester I find it’s a hard habit to break, which is why, on Friday afternoon with nowhere better to be and nothing better to be doing, I found myself shopping in the City Centre, with 90% of my time devoted to the Arndale (the rest being my necessary weekly trip to Tesco for bread and chocolate).

History

It was in 1972 that they started building this place and by its completion in 1979 it was the largest covered town shopping centre in Europe, covering some 30 acres in the old city centre, with 750,000 shoppers visiting it each week. Being home to over 200 shops, major department stores, restaurants and fast food outlets it has become an integral part of the Manchester Shopping Experience.

The centre houses an 1800 space multi-storey car park, shopping malls on two level and the Arndale Centre Bus Station at Cannon Street, (which was closed by the IRA bombing of Manchester in 1996 but is now fully re-opened) and which handles over 40 000 passengers a day.

The centre was designed by the architects Hugh Wilson and Lewis Womersley, who had already redeveloped the University Precinct on Oxford Road, as well as having had a considerable involvement in the redevelopment of housing in the Hulme area. At the time it was a controversial development as it obliterated
some of Manchester's old streets and alleys, and stubbornly defying all the old Victorian grandeur surrounding it, with its massive monolithic concrete forms and unrelieved ceramic cladding. The whole project cost some £100million - a then unthinkable sum.

It cost a total of £100 000 000 to build, and it has since had a £25,000,000 refurbishment. It averages 900 000 shoppers per week (over 1 500 000 in a week at Christmas),


Shops –

Dorothy Perkins
BHS
Littlewoods
New Look
Lilly Wittingham
Benetton
Burtons
Top Shop
Miss Selfridge

Mothercare
Adams
Warner Brothers Store

County Bookshops
WH Smiths
The Works


Gadget Shop
Discovery Store
Quarters
Argos
Index
Superdrug,
Thorntons,
Going Places
Carphone Warehouse
Boots
Superdrug
The Body Shop

Plus many more


Food

There are a number of cafes and restaurants throughout the centre, but the majority are concentrated in the new-last-year food court at one end (near Boots). Here you’ll find a wide array of foods on offer ranging from Chinese dishes to Jacket Potatoes, fast food courtesy of a mini Mc Donalds branch and, erm, ice cream. Elsewhere you can find Frozen Yoghurt stands and Millies Cookies and Baskin Robbins – hmmm, what does this say about Mancunian’s diets?


Layout

Spread over 2 floors, at first glance it appears to be well laid out with lots of pathways and escalators and stairs wherever you need them. When you look closer, however, you can detect little faults or oddities. For example, near Argos there are a couple of escalators (one up, one down…). Down you go and at the bottom you find, Argos. And just Argos. Separating this area from the rest of that floor are 3 walls, meaning that to get from there to the shop about 3 m away, you have to go up the escalator, across the pa
th, down another escalator and then head backwards about 2m…..sensible? Noooooo.


Problems

Lots of people shop there daily (probably something to do with the fact that it’s enclosed and it has been known, very occasionally, to rain in Manchester….) so often by early afternoon it’s a complete and utter tip. They do employ cleaners and they are usually around for all to see, but the majority seem to spend all their time talking to each other rather than actually working. You wonder why they manage to keep their jobs the lack of work some of them do. Although there are public loos, these are pretty grotty, and I wouldn’t recommend them.


Aside From The Shops

In the central part there’s a largish open plan area that houses different things depending on the day or season. On Friday it was home to a careers / recruitment exhibition, but at Christmas it is transformed into a Winter Wonderland complete with Santa in his grotto with his little elf helpers.


Getting There

It’s walkable from pretty much anywhere in the city – less than 5 minutes walk from both Deansgate and the Printworks. If you’re coming from out of town it’s within walking distance of Piccadilly, Oxford Road and Victoria stations, with the nearest Metro Link stop being Market Street (right out side Debenhams).


At the end of the day, not much to say. It’s just a shopping centre after all, but as shopping centres go it pretty much lives up to standard.

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