Following a £6m transformation, Bruntwood SciTech is relaunching the historic 117–119 Portland Street forming the anchor for its newly named Manchester innovation cluster –Thread Works.
Located at the gateway to the Oxford Road Corridor, the reimagined Grade II listed building combines sustainable design with creative heritage, delivering 35,000 sq ft of fully fitted workspace for SMEs in the city’s booming tech, digital and innovation sectors. WW+P Architects, Egis UK and Property Hub are already signed up.
The building will act as the focal events and social hub to support connection and collaboration across the four buildings, with a 40-seat auditorium, communal breakout lounges on both the ground and lower ground floors, an onsite gym, and boutique gym-quality showers and changing facilities, helping to foster community, work-life balance, and active travel.
Thread Works spans four refurbished buildings- 117–119, 113–115 and 127 Portland Street, and 61 Oxford Street – forming a hub for ambitious, innovation-led businesses between the city centre and knowledge quarter.
The name Thread Works draws on the buildings’ first ever user Schill Seebohm & Co – 19th century shipping merchants trading Manchester’s famous locally made textiles from these buildings in the 1880s, and the concept of a ‘thread’ in technology typically being the smallest set or sequence of instructions that a computer handles
Businesses locating to Thread Works will join Bruntwood SciTech’s Manchester community of more than 400 startups, scaleups and global businesses across their 21 city centre innovation hubs and 4 campuses, as well as their national network of over 1,100 innovation, tech and science companies. They also gain access to Bruntwood SciTech’s innovation growth support which provides everything a business needs to scale – including connections with the brightest talent, capital and investment, as well as introductions to established partners such as universities, hospital trusts and other public and private sector organisations. At the gateway to the knowledge quarter, Thread Works customers will especially benefit from introductions and access to top-class talent at the University of Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan University as well as alternative training providers all based on the Oxford Road Corridor.
Jack Harrison, Commercial Manager for Bruntwood SciTech, said:
“The transformation of 117–119 Portland Street marks a key milestone in our mission to support businesses looking to access Manchester’s growing innovation ecosystem. As the anchor of our new Thread Works cluster, it will provide a home for small to mid-sized fast growing businesses to connect, collaborate and scale both within the immediate neighbourhood, and across Bruntwood SciTech’s city-wide ecosystem.
“WW+P’s arrival reinforces the important role workspace and our established ecosystem plays in the growth of creative and innovative businesses. As the practice joins our growing community of forward thinking, ambitious businesses, we will continue to support cross-industry collaboration that leads to future defining work.”
