Why both Hotspur Press Building and Manchester’s residents are gutted

Back in 2023, the Category A-listed Jenners building in Edinburgh made the news after a major fire broke out, for the second time since 1892, leaving the building ravaged and, more importantly, killing one firefighter who’d been fighting the blaze.

Having stood on the city’s famous Princes Street for almost 200 years and functioning as a department store until 2020, the building was set to undergo a multi-million pound project that would repurpose the space as a luxury hotel after significant renovations.

Following the blaze, the renovation plans – backed by Danish billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen’s real estate company AAA – recommenced. These included changes to the atrium stair arrangement to be replaced by a “fire-fighting stair”, and a new proposal which raised the volume by around three metres to create a bar terrace on the 7th floor. The building is set to become a “commercially viable” use of space.

In Glasgow, Scotway House was redeveloped as student accommodation in 2019, and detailed plans were approved last year for a similar project in Sauchiehall Street’s ABC building. These decisions went ahead despite 130 objections, including from heritage organisations and members of the SNP against the latter.

Both provide a likely insight into the future of Manchester’s Hotspur Press Building.

Scotway House, built in 1885 and located on a prominent harbour site that had been earmarked for development, was the former drawing office for engineers and ship building firm D&W Henderson, according to Glasgow West End Today.

Although the listed building was destroyed in the fire in 2016, less than a decade later the first result that comes up in a quick google search for “fire Scotway House Glasgow” isn’t news reports of the blaze.

Rather, it’s the website and address for Prestige Student Living Scotway House, accommodation that sells out each year, the cheapest rooms in which begin at £240 per person, per week. That’s just over half of what someone aged 21 and over working full-time on minimum wage in the UK would earn per week.

Two years after the Scotway House blaze, a fire which began in the Glasgow School of Art Mackintosh Building spread to the O2 ABC venue. Rather than replace the damage with a revamped music venue, urban living property developer Vita Groups have announced plans to turn the site into a community food hall.

This new-build would include student accommodation provisions as part of Glasgow’s “Golden Z” regeneration framework.

These examples in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and most recently Manchester respectively, highlight the focus on development and regeneration rather than collective community and democratic wellbeing.

As well as the tragic loss of life that has occured as a result, we’re watching as the history of our cities is destroyed and damages are paid out to gentrification profiteers.

absolutely insane that everyone who lives in Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh knows that the ‘random fires’ in their cities are 100% deliberate and done so property developers can make a few quid but there’s seemingly nothing anyone is able to do about it

— marc (@feelingsplain) June 23, 2025

Meanwhile, more and more people are forced to move out of the cities – sometimes in the areas they’ve grown up in – thanks to exorbitant rent prices and an unrealistically expensive standard of living.

The students – those who can afford it – may have somewhere to live, but what will be left of our own histories? Where is the affordable housing for the masses?

Acorn Union in Manchester have shared an open letter to Anna Meylakh, the Head of Operations at Manner, in response to the blaze. It asks for the company to pledge 30% social housing to make living more affordable in Manchester.

You can sign the open letter here.