DEVELOPMENT

Transforming Spindles Town Square

Oldham Council is redeveloping Spindles Town Square, changing it from being solely retail-focused to a place for all the community to use. This means providing better shops, new space for work and an improved leisure and entertainment offer for people of all ages. Work has already started and over the coming months you will start to see lots of changes taking place to bring the plans to life.

Spindles Town Square, businesses in the centre and the car parks will be open throughout the works, and we’ll work hard to keep disruption to a minimum. The works will take until early 2025 to fully complete. We’ll keep you updated as the redevelopment progresses and look forward to welcoming you to your new-look centre soon. Watch this space!

The redevelopment of Spindles Town Square is just one of many projects taking place to regenerate your town centre. We also have a new theatre and town centre park on the way, the Old Library is re-opening and we’re making it easier to get around, especially on foot and by bike.

You can see what else is happening in Oldham at www.oldham.gov.uk/towncentre

New Tommyfield Market

Tommyfield Market has a long and proud history in Oldham – and we want to ensure it has a thriving future.

The redeveloped Spindles Town Square will provide a new home for Tommyfield Market, which will relocate to a new split-level market, purpose-built in and around the former TJ Hughes unit.

Stalls selling a wide range of products and services will be at mall level, while a dedicated food and drink court will be on the lower level connecting directly to Parliament Square. This new location offers enhanced visibility in the heart of the town centre, with direct access to both the shopping centre and the Old Town Hall.

It will boost the centre’s shopping, leisure and entertainment offer, as well as being better for traders who can benefit from increased footfall, access to the adjacent car parks and nearby public transport stops. It will also connect to our new events space. We’ve designed this area of the centre in a way that will allow us to keep the food market and events space open until late – giving you more places to visit and enjoy into the evening.

New Event Space

We’re creating a new events space above the new Tommyfield Market for public and private use, with rooftop views across the borough.

The space will be flexible to accommodate a variety of events, with the flexibility to operate as a music venue as well as hosting public and private functions.

Available both day and night, its flexibility means we can sub-divide the space and change the layout and seating to accommodate many different audience sizes, with a total capacity of up to 1,000 people.

Linking directly to Parliament Square and the new Tommyfield Market, including the new food hall, it will boost the cultural, leisure, entertainment and events offer within Oldham.

You will be able to access the events space via the shopping centre or from an entrance on Ashcroft Street. It will include bar and kitchen facilities, toilets, a cloakroom and foyer.

Improved Retail Space

Creating a new retail loop, connecting the mall, high street and market.

To give shoppers a better experience, we are condensing the centre’s retail area to the ground floor of Spindles through to Town Square and linking into the new Tommyfield Market.

Some of our fantastic shops have already relocated, including Waterstones, Costa, H&T Pawnbrokers and Asiana Clinic. We’ll keep you posted on any other relocations and are always looking to bring new businesses and retailers on board.

This new retail area will make it easier and more enjoyable to visit, with shops in one main area instead of scattered throughout the centre. It will also help us to connect the high street, malls and market in a retail ‘loop’ and enable the upper floor of Spindles to be repurposed for workspace.

Public Archive

A purpose built Archive and Collections Centre accessible by the public.

When not on show in Gallery Oldham or elsewhere, Oldham’s archives and museum artefacts are currently stored in various locations within council-owned buildings, which sometimes have poor environmental and access conditions. The distribution of artefacts also makes it difficult to allow viewing of items as they are not readily accessible.

The new Accessible Archive and Collections Centre will house museum and archive items that are not on display, in a safe and accessible environment with a degree of public access.

A space at mall level will act a search room similar to the current local studies offer at 84 Union Street. In the new archive centre, people will be able to access the archives, look at maps, photographs and documents, research family history, access census information and more.

Access to the lower levels would likely be on scheduled guided tours. This could include public tours, school parties, community organisations – or anyone who wants to find out more.

The archive will be a new, enhanced home, for Oldham Local Studies and Archives, currently based at 84 Union Street. We have plans to use 84 Union Street as a new theatre and Oldham Coliseum, once Local Studies relocates.

Co-Working Space

A brand new co-working space for entrepreneurs.

The upper mall of Spindles has been redeveloped as an area for work. This includes a brand new co-working space for entrepreneurs.

It supports businesses such as start-ups, micro-enterprises, social enterprises, and small businesses, as well as larger, more established, businesses looking for contemporary workspace.

We particularly support growing sectors such as creative design and media, in order to deliver new jobs for local people and replicate successes elsewhere in Greater Manchester. The area provides a flexible co-working space, creating room for these businesses to collaborate and flourish.

To encourage and support local entrepreneurs, we have a dedicated business investment team based within the workspace, to help local entrepreneurs in a wide range of ways – whether it’s advice on getting their business idea off the ground, business growth assistance, or support with accessing funding and grants.

The entrepreneur workspace will have 24-hour access and will be based opposite new office space for Oldham Council staff.

By relocating our teams into the centre, we have made our services more accessible to residents, increase footfall in the centre and free up the Civic Centre for future development as new homes.

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