| Since I spend a lot of time on the ELR, I occasionally head down to 'headquarters' at Bury and take a few pictures around the Bury Station area, also I often head up for the Heap Bridge/Pilsworth area to take shots of some of the locos passing over the motorway. During these visits it was hard not to notice that something major was going on near the centre of Bury, and the sight of a lot of tower cranes there caught both my eye and curiosity.
During a visit in August 2008 I observed a lot of work taking place, on what I later discovered was a project known as the "Rock Triangle" (The Rock is the name of an area of central Bury), and research on the internet revealed that the eastern quarter of Bury town centre was undergoing a £300 million mixed-use development, which was expected to be completed in 2010. Amongst the users of this new complex will be around 60 shops, which will include a Debenhams store, a new 10 screen multiplex cinema, which will be run by 'Vue', who currently operate the 12 screen cinema at the Park 66 site at Pilsworth, which opened in 1990. There will also be a 1000 space multi-storey car park, a Tenpin Bowling Alley, around 10 Restaurants, a medical centre and several hundred apartments. The project is being jointly managed by Bury Council and Thornfield Properties. A return visit in early December noted that quite a lot of steelwork had gone up since my previous visit back in August, so I will try and visit at least once a month in the future, and record the development as it progresses. The project seems to be going on in spite of the credit crunch, so it will be nice to see at least one major project reach completion after all the many cancelled projects in other parts of the area. The next visit took place in late January 2009, and this time I also took a few shots of the 'Townside' development too, which is on the opposite side of Bury centre and next to the Town Hall, this is still pretty much just a steel frame, and not quite so easy to photograph as the Rock development. On the 7th of February I was travelling by train to Heywood, and as the line passes to the rear of the 'Townside' site I was able to get a few shots of the project from a different angle, this makes the site look a lot more impressive than it does from the Town Centre side. If this is a residential development some of the residents should get a nice view of the East Lancashire Railway and Metrolink anyway! On the 15th of March I was in Bury again and took the opportunity to get a few more shots of the new 'Townside' development, which borders on to the railway near to the 'ski jump' over the Metrolink line. This looks like being an even larger building than I first thought. Monthly visits in April and May 2009 saw much progress on the main metalwork structure, and this now seemed to be nearing it's completion. July 12th was my next visit, and the site had progressed well during the longer days of summer, and work now seemed to be going on 7 days a week, you can really see the progress on the site now. A visit on the 29th of August saw a big change on the site, all of the large tower cranes had now been removed, and the outside of the structure was mostly covered in scaffolding, and many of the walls and windows had now been installed, the building is really starting to take shape now. In early October the Townside development was starting to look like its exterior is nearing completion, with much of the brickwork now in place. |
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