Interesting. Some of the matters in this document have been discussed in the Manchester Evening News before but I haven't seen the document itself. It's expressed to be a draft for consultation so if they're now sending out letters about it, presumably the public consultation has started.
These types of documents are always aspirational and short on detail, and inevitably not everything in them comes to pass. Nonetheless, the Campus, the Beswick Hub and the sixth-form college from previous versions of the Eastlands Regeneration Framework have become a reality. Discussions have been ongoing with MMU and other parties for several years about the possibility of some kind of sports university at the Campus, so I suspect this is already well past appealing to people to consider something. I believe they'll have quite a definite idea of the facility they want to create and people lined up to help create it. Of course, making it happen is still another matter and could involve substantial challenges.
What's clear is that they see the educational development as key to stimulating further development on the collar site and possibly the north car parks. Any announcement about the initial stage of the latter would seem unlikely to precede the announcement of the university, but perhaps some new sports and commercial facilities (an arena and conferencing space, perhaps) might be built concurrently with the educational facility.
I see that they haven't completely rowed back on the 'leisure and tourism destination' aspiration. There's a reference to "successful destination leisure and tourism attractions" that "internationally distinctive in content and scale". Notably less effusive language, however. The prospect of operation round the clock, also associated with attractions in previous documents, also gets a mention here.
The prospect of relocating the athletics arena and other sports facilities to make way for commercial development has been dropped from proposals made in previous documents. And while there's a mention of a hope to attract sports governing bodies to Manchester, the idea of a 'House of Sport' building at the Beswick Hub to house them doesn't seem to be referred to (I've only scan read it, though, so maybe I missed something).
Parking is going to be a major challenge. I see they say they hope to get more people using Metrolink, and that presumably includes the mooted new tram-train line from Marple, which would stop at Ashburys and a new Beswick stop before heading to the stop at Piccadilly station. However, the conversion of heavy rail for tram-trains in the UK is currently subject to a trial in South Yorkshire that was supposed to start ages ago and seems to have been delayed time after time (not sure what the latest status is). So it's going to take quite a while before we'll have any new Marple trams coming this way.
