The Viadux 2 scheme for developer Salboy and contractor Domis, is planned for a 1.49ha site between the Deansgate-Castlefield Metrolink station and Manchester Arena. Manchester City Council will decide on the scheme this afternoon (10 April) but planning officers have recommended it for approval. SimpsonHaugh’s proposals feature a 241m-tall residential skyscraper reaching 76 storeys and a shorter 23-storey block on the former Bauer Millet car showroom site off Albion Street.Advertisement Viadux 2 would be the third highest building in the country and the tallest outside the capital. It will dwarf the neighbouring 47-storey Beetham Tower (169m) and 65-storey Deansgate Square South Tower (201m) in Manchester’s emerging high-rise cluster. Together, the two blocks will house 585 homes, with 133 affordable, in two buildings as well as a 160-bedroom 5-star hotel. When the scheme was submitted in spring 2023, it included 900 new homes, with the hotel introduced in amended plans. SimpsonHaugh says the tower features inclined faces, designed to ‘catch light differently, creating a dynamic response to changes in light conditions’. It will be five storeys taller than the practice’s consented 71-storey skyscraper within Renaker’s growing Great Jackson Street cluster. SimpsonHaugh’s latest proposed skyscraper will link via a podium to phase one of the Viadux development, a 40-storey residential building currently under construction. Manchester planning officers said in their recommendation that the Viadux 2 scheme would add a ‘world-class building’ to the city’s skyline while contributing to ‘placemaking and regeneration in the area’. They also argue that it supports local housing needs.Advertisement The same planning report said concerns raised by Historic England during the consultation process over the scale of the scheme were ‘without merit’. It argued that ‘the buildings around it are the tallest buildings in the UK outside of London, and building more modern, tall buildings will showcase Manchester as a dynamic and growing city, that wants to attract people’.