WHAT is it about former railway property that attracts pop-ups? Availability first and foremost. The post-industrial city is scattered with arches and indeed whole stations that have seen more glorious days. If the Great Northern Warehouse failed to sustain Guerrilla Eats as a permanent open-to-the-public project, well the more modest GRUB at Alphabet set in the Piccadilly Arches is prospering.
Now a gigantic space created back in 1910 to alleviate over-crowding at Piccadilly Station proper is getting its own chance to participate in the street food revolution. Perhaps the sudden plans for long-empty Mayfield Station have their inspiration in the festive season success of Winter Gathring at another empty station, albeit one that hosted the fire brigade, London Road.
Developers U + I have submitted plans to the council to temporarily open up part of the site off Baring Street for three years as a food and drink/performance/events hub. To accommodate all this a temporary four-storey scaffold and timber structure would be erected.
Thiswould host a sheltered street food market and ‘people’s garden’, a terrace/events amphitheatre and raised work space, designed to heighten the profile of this 24 acre site destined for a £850m regeneration over the next decade, which promises new homes, jobs and a 350 room hotel.
The station was closed to passengers in 1960 but reopened as a Royal Mail depot between 1970 and 1986. Abandoned, it almost became reinvented as an arts venue after Manchester International Festival staged events there in 2013 and 2015, but all that fell through. The latest move looks much more positive.