The Arch Bar: Hulme Icon

The Arch Bar (later Zar Bar) was the troubled but iconic Hulme pub that was based on Stretford Road. Persistent disorder led the bar to be closed by the police and eventually it was torn down and more student flats are currently being built in its place.

Despite problems, local residents were hoping that the building could remain, and used differently, as a café or other community resource, especially as the building had a restrictive covenant on it.

In a recent angry exchange between Mary Murphy and local green activist, Nigel Woodcock, more information came to light.

On the public Hulme-Residents-Online-Group, Nigel argued that the local councillors at the time had removed the ‘restrictive covenant’, which gave the company that wanted to build flats “a green light to destroy the Arch building”.

Surprisingly, as part of her response Councillor Murphy replies “it was I who set up a meeting with our Deputy Chief Executive to discuss the removal of the covenant" … "At time of the removal of the covenant Myself and Nigel (Murphy, another Hulme Labour councillor) were representing our constituents.”

But which constituents? Not the hundreds who campaigned with petitions and direct action to keep the building open.

It was eye-catching and could have been a useful community centre resource for Hulme with a little bit of creative thinking.

Unfortunately, there is a lack of creative thinking from our local councillors. And with the closure and removal of services from Hulme, that is not good the area, not good for me and you.

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Breaking News:Hulme Labour wants to have its cake and eat it too!

The Arch Bar / student halls planning decision has today been deferred by the Townhall Planning Committee once again. Well done to the residents and Hulme Greens for keeping up the pressure!

Some local greens have been researching the situation, going back to when it was the Admiral and even before that. In fact it was 31st March 1980 when the brewery, Robinson’s (based in Stockport) took out a “restrictive covenant” which meant that the premises could BE USED ONLY AS A PUBLIC HOUSE.

That covenant remained in place for just over 30 years, until it was released on 15th June 2009, nearly two months after the planning application was submitted to turn Arch Bar into a 7-storey student block. And now we learn that none other than Nigel TIM Murphy has been claiming the credit for getting the covenant removed. He’s also claiming credit for getting the size of the block reduced by one floor. I think the local residents and greens deserve the credit for that. But we still lament the loss of yet another local community resource.

The Green Party is not anti-student, many of them are our natural supporters, candidates and members, but when an area is swamped with student halls and these are segregated from the wider community – almost literally, in the case of Hulme – then there is a sense of lack of investment in the locality, and sometimes a lack of care. Hulme is a vibrant mixed community - lets continue to fight to keep it this way.

We’d like Nigel Murphy to out from behind his invisibility cloak to come clean over his involvement in the lifting of the restrictive covenant that stood for 30 years. which signed the death warrant for the Arch to be used as a community space and/or social housing( didn't Hulme Labour promise us that last year in their campaign leaflet?)

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