- Manchester Conference Centre
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The Manchester Conference Centre is a conference centre in Manchester, England that is owned and managed by the Opal Property Group. It has several locations, distributed over the campus of Manchester University. As the Weston Building it was originally built, owned and operated by UMIST.
When it was built in 1982, British universities had already become established in the conference market, providing large-scale facilities for conferences during university vacation down-time, and bringing in cash to help bridge the funding gap. The Manchester Conference Centre was built to appeal to the corporate market; the architecture is very modern, and all of its facilities were cutting-edge.
The Sackville complex was built in 1991, using the latest technology at the time. However, in some areas it is starting to look a bit dated by modern standards.
The lower foyer features one of the few Foucault's pendulums in the United Kingdom, but this particular pendulum is pushed by an electro-magnet and no longer demonstrates the turning of the earth, but remains as an interesting feature of the centre. Unaffected by this technicality, a brass plate still tells the history of the pendulum and describes the effect in detail.
In recent years, the 117 hotel bedrooms have been franchised to Days Inn as a Days Hotel which has seen further growth in its business as a premium budget city centre hotel. A great factor in its success is that it is within 300 m of the Manchester Piccadilly station, Manchester's main west coast station. Manchester has seen a vast increase in hotel build in recent years and competition has been very stiff in the city.
See also
- Manchester Central (Conference Centre) Complex consisting of two venues formerly known as the GMEX Centre and Manchester International Conference Centre (MICC))
External links
Categories:- Buildings and structures in Manchester
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