Vinoly’s £1bn scheme could take the Blues away

Home » Regions » N West » Vinoly’s £1bn scheme…

Vinoly’s £1bn scheme could take the Blues away

14/05/10 1:04 pm By Mark Shepherd

For the summer at least, the City of Manchester Stadium will fall silent.

The end of the football season means that fans of Manchester City can dream of Champions League success next time around under their Abu Dhabi chairman, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, who is also the head of Mubadala Development Company.

But the absence of throngs of supporters streaming into east Manchester does not mean that things are not happening behind the scenes.

Although manager Roberto Mancini will no doubt be scouring the transfer market for players, his boss has been strongly linked with a swoop on top architect Rafael Vinoly to design a £1bn sports and leisure complex on 200 acres of land around the stadium.

As with all the best transfer rumours, nobody wants to say much. Manchester City Council, which has signed a development agreement with the football club and regeneration company New East Manchester to develop a huge project on the site, directed all enquiries to Eastlands.

When the name Rafael Vinoly was then put to the Manchester City press office, all Property Week received was a terse “no comment”.

But Vinoly and Al Mubarak have played together before. Vinoly is the architect on Mubadala’s Mina Zayed waterfront scheme in Abu Dhabi. That project comprises leisure and entertainment facilities and forms part of 55 acre urban waterfront redevelopment that will be a central plank of Abu Dhabi’s plans to become a world-class tourism destination. It is anchored by an MGM Mirage non-gaming hotel.

The similarities between what he is doing there and the vision for Eastlands are striking. A source familiar with Mubadala said: “They have done a lot of work together in the past. It would not be a surprise to anyone if they were to team up at the Manchester City site.”

Vinoly was also a prominent figure on the Mubadala stand at the Cityscape property exhibition, held in the emirate last month.

If Vinoly is to be signed, it will be a significant step forward for the site, which has been looking for a scheme ever since 2007, when the government announced that a supercasino could be built there, but then changed its mind.

Instead of gamblers, the plan now accommodates a world-class training complex, leisure facilities, restaurants, retail and a hotel.

Perhaps it is time for fans to wonder how Vinoly would look in a blue shirt.