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The next EIGHT high streets set to receive a major makeovers have been confirmed by Manchester council. Town hall bosses have promised to revamp Manchester’s suburban centres with hundreds of millions of pounds going on new public spaces, shops, and homes in-and-around existing high streets. Last month, final plans were confirmed for Gorton and Moston , with £60m earmarked for the former’s Hyde Road heartland, set to create a new food hall and 400 new homes. Moston Lane will get a new public square, shops, and more than 100 flats in a £90m project. Join the Manchester Evening News WhatsApp group HERE Strangeways and Wythenshawe have also previously been named as suburbs set to see cash pour in, with ‘half-a-billion pounds’ heading to the south Manchester town’s civic centre. And now, Manchester council says improvements will be made to Newton Heath, Harpurhey , Cheetham, Levenshulme , Longsight , Burnage, Fallowfield , and Chorlton ‘in the coming years’. “We have many distinct centres, local centres and high streets across the city and we are committed to delivering for the residents and businesses who live and work in them – because we know how important these places are to the residents they serve,” said Gavin White, executive councillor for development. In north Manchester, Harpurhey is in line for 300 new homes and a ‘Harpurhey Health Hub’, with Cheetham already seeing £100,000 spent on its high street, but more work will be done to examine ‘potential projects at St Luke’s Church and St Mark’s church yard’ in the area as a six-month programme ‘looking at issues in the district centre’ gets underway. Newton Heath is getting a masterplan to help steer the development of ‘housing, community facilities, local services, and high street investment’ next year. South Manchester has five areas seeing changes. ‘Community-led cultural events’ will become a fixture in Levenshulme to keep people visiting Stockport Road, as affordable housing is planned in the next year. Just up the A6, in Longsight , a similar programme of events, public art, and greening will give the area some TLC, as a deep clean and declutter is eyed. The plan in Burnage is for new planting and public realm improvements, including cycle lanes and public art. Fallowfield will also get a large mural celebrating Manchester’s student capital and one time FA Cup final hosts, with more housing and better public realm planned for the suburb as Manchester council tries to attract students closer to the city centre. And Chorlton will see more primary medical care facilities, public artwork, and a new over-55s social rent complex, set to open next year or 2027. The disparate nature of the projects was an intentional choice, according to Becca Heron, the council’s strategic director of growth. On Tuesday (November 4), she told the authority’s regeneration scrutiny committee: “We need a differential approach. “Some areas are in for large-scale regeneration. Others, it’s about protecting character of the centre and building on that. We are taking a comprehensive approach to review what each centre needs.” But the newly-announced areas do not have funding to complete the work at the moment, Coun White confirmed the same meeting, held in Abraham Moss. “When there’s funding available, we want to get that for a district centre,” he said. “But the key thing we have found is that we need a plan. [This] is something we can present to the government to say here’s our plan, help us fund it. We can attract private investment [with it].”
