26 September 2023

This grand Neoclassical facade, featuring ionic columns, looks at home amongst the restrained 1850s bluestone classical warehouses at the bottom of King Street, but it’s actually much younger – it was built in 1937 for the Victorian Butter Factory, Cooperative, replacing, ‘two old bluestone warehouses’, and was designed by Marcus Barlow (famous for the 1932 Manchester Unity Building), and from the illustration perhaps it was meant to look like stone. It’s been Inflation nightclub since 1979, at a time when the whole strip of warehouses became a night time entertainment precinct. I had fun there on gay night on Wednesdays in the 80s, when it closed on the dot of 3am. This row of four warehouses was bought up by the (Kuwaiti based) St Martins property group, partners to the Grollo family, who together developed the Rialto towers, to protect the Rialto Tower area. In recent years the Grollos have bought out all four from St Martins, buying Inflation in 2019, and now they’ve put the whole lot up for sale. They’re all heritage listed and guidelines would not allow facading or cantilevering so hopefully they’ll stay just as they are, but something on legs on the back half seems likely.

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