The Revival of Peter Street? The Return of WHP!
The Warehouse Project returns on Easter Sunday April 8 at a yet to be revealed new venue, although our money is on the BBC Manchester building or maybe Manchester Central. March 22 will be when the news is released and we'll be letting you know as soon as we hear. The Easter special will be a marathon event from 5.30pm to 4.00am and it will be in Manchester, despite any rumours of a move away. Loco Dice, Jamie Jones, Carl Craig presents 69 Live, Maya Jane Coles, Claude Von Stroke, Benoit & Sergio, M.A.N.D.Y., plus several more. Tickets are at £25.
Scottish bar and beer company Brewdog were looking to open up somewhere within the over-subscribed Northern Quarter. Let's face it, if you open a bar there now, you've missed the boat somewhat. Better to be a leader than a follower, just ask that bar which was around the corner from Lammar's and took too much influence from Lammar's design style. The name nearly escaped us - Bar De Reve. If it had a character of its own, it might still be open now and have lingered in the memory a little stronger. Back to the point - Brewdog are now eyeing the Southern Quarter - Peter Street to be precise. The very Peter Street that underwent renovation around 2000 that saw a clutch of superbars open their four-figure capacity doors to the mainstream crowd. The talk is of Brewdog opening in the vacant Electric Boogaloo unit.
One of the reasons that Brewdog might open a bar on Peter Street is that they're looking at one of our own local operators and seeing them as a style-setter. Trof are planning on renovating the Albert Hall into a bar and restaurant of their own. If the venue escapes you, it's the old Brannigan's and the building above it, previously featured on TV as one of the most haunted places in the city. They're aiming for a 2013 opening but before that, we'll see the opening, possibly even as early as April, of a new Trof on the site of the Green Room on Whitworth Street. We also hear that, and this is a rumour, the Squares bar might become a Revolution. That'd be three across the city in a rough 'T' shape. Think it's possible? Sensible?
BarCode, formerly Aqua and located close to Deansgate Locks, has been closed down after the city council and Manchester police decided that the incidents of violence and excessive noise levels went too far and were not being adequately handled. Three pre-Christmas arrests at the club caused a suspension of the venue's licence that then became a complete withdrawal of it. Let's look at this kind of situation with a metaphor. If you have a school where the pupils are unruly and the teachers can't control them, do you close the school? Or bring in tougher teachers and expel the unruly kids? Granted, a bar is not a school, but it's a baby out with the bathwater reaction. What's needed is for trouble causers to be identified and banned, and for a more relaxed and educated attitude to drink intake, as in, there's no need for you to down 15 units of booze in two hours. But the overall picture is this: BarCode was situated around Deansgate Locks. The Locks is now what Peter Street once was. Two many louts that can't handle their liquor, or mind their manners. If the news in the two previous paragraphs is all to come into fruition, then Peter Street will be reborn and its old reputation will vanish into history. Maybe the Locks will be given a facelift in five or ten years, but it will probably have to go through economic decline first.
The Kro Bar chain looks to be going through a difficult time. The Trafford Centre branch is up for sale and Kro 2 is 'closed for refurbishment', although the word is that it's actually closed permanently. Since the BBC moved out of Oxford Road, that has had an effect on the amount of trade. The Piccadilly branch is going strong thanks to a great location, so Kro might deem it wise to focus on that branch and their original classic down the far end of Oxford Road.
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