Church Street revival at core of Muse’s Eccles plan, Salford 2026

Key Points

• Muse, the national placemaker, is leading a major regeneration scheme in Eccles, Salford, aiming to “wake” what it calls a “sleeping giant” of a failed town centre.​
• The project involves replacing a defunct shopping centre acquired by Salford City Council in late 2023 with around 1,270–1,300 homes, de‑engineered highways, and a revitalised Church Street.​
• Two rounds of public consultation have taken place since March 2026, with residents broadly supportive of the plans, according to Jon Matthews of Jon Matthews Architects and Alex Vogel, senior development manager at Muse.​
• The team explicitly rejects copying Altrincham‑style regeneration, instead emphasising Eccles’ own history, identity, and community, as described by Matthews and Vogel.​
• Residents have told the design team they do not want a “new Altrincham” but a “better Eccles”, with a revived Church Street at the heart of the vision.​
• The scheme aims to “repopulate” the town centre for the post‑retail era, creating a residential base of more than 3,000 people to support independent retail, food and beverage, and community‑led uses.​
• Connectivity is a central theme: the M602 motorway has historically cut Eccles off from areas such as Monton, Ellesmere Park, and the hospital to the north, while strong rail, tram, and bus links to Manchester and MediaCity are seen as strengths.​
• The proposals seek to de‑engineer the current confusing one‑way system, improve pedestrian crossings, and create new links such as Vicarage Walk and Church Square between Albert Street and Church Street.​
• Tenure mix is critical: the design team stresses a “wide breadth” of housing, including social, private‚ and family‑oriented homes, to avoid creating either an “expensive‑apartment bubble” or a “social ghetto” and to reflect Eccles’ existing diversity.​
• Regeneration risks gentrification, a concern Vogel acknowledges is “difficult” to balance; the stated aim is to keep longtime residents, attract new ones, and preserve Eccles’ culture and identity, rather than simply import “chain” brands such as Gail’s coffee shops.​
• The project fits within the broader Greater Manchester regeneration agenda backed politically and financially by Mayor Andy Burnham and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), including the £2bn Good Growth Fund that has already channelled over £100m to Muse‑linked schemes in other boroughs.​
• Eccles’ relative under‑performance despite its transport links is repeatedly framed as a “punching below its weight” story, with residents hopeful that regeneration can flip connectivity from a factor encouraging people to leave, into one that draws people in.​

Salford(Manchester Mirror) March 31, 2026 – Muse, the national placemaker contracted by Salford City Council, is attempting to revive what it calls a “sleeping giant” of a town centre in Eccles, by tearing down a defunct shopping centre and rebuilding around nearly 1,300 homes, a revitalised Church Street, and a remade street‑pattern that puts residents’ voices at the heart of the design.​

The scheme, detailed in a Place North West report by journalist Dan Whelan, is the latest in a suite of large‑scale regeneration projects Muse is delivering across Greater Manchester, and it is framed as a test of whether locally‑driven, community‑shaped renewal can succeed where post‑war planning and retail‑led models have failed.​

What is Muse’s Eccles regeneration plan?

According to Whelan’s report, the core of the Eccles plan is to replace the former shopping centre bought by Salford City Council in late 2023 with around 1,270 homes, infrastructure changes, and a new geography of public space that “repopulates” the town centre for the post‑retail era.​

As described by Alex Vogel, senior development manager at Muse, the project team is deliberately “immersed” in the history of Eccles and in conversations with long‑term residents, so that the design “gets shaped by the conversations that you have with the local community” rather than imposed from outside.​

Why is Eccles called a “sleeping giant”?

The phrase “sleeping giant” appears several times in the Place North West article, attributed to the design team and to the project’s own narrative.​

Jon Matthews, founder of Jon Matthews Architects leading the redesign, is quoted telling the publication: “It is a sleeping giant. It’s a failed town centre at the moment but it could be a regionally special place.”​

His comments echo a broader critique that 20th‑century planning stripped the historic, housing‑based town centre of Eccles and replaced it with a shopping centre that later collapsed under competition from the Trafford Centre and West One Retail Park, as well as the presence of a large Morrisons at the heart of the existing centre.​

How are residents shaping the plans?

Since the beginning of March 2026, residents have been taking part in a second round of public consultation on the Eccles regeneration, with the Place North West article noting that the first round ran in autumn 2025 and the second continues into March 2026.​

As reported by Dan Whelan, Jon Matthews said: “You can get quite a lot of aggro at public consultation. Sometimes there’s a lot of anger in the community about what’s happening. I’ve not picked that up on this one. What I’ve picked up is a lot of civic pride and people desperate for change and for a better Eccles.”​

Alex Vogel of Muse told the same outlet that “that shared voice is fundamental” and that the team cannot simply walk into a place “not knowing anything and think that you know best and start designing things up.”​

What do Eccles residents actually want?

The Place North West profile highlights a recurring refrain from residents: they do not want a “new Altrincham” – a frequent shorthand in Greater Manchester for glossy, property‑led regeneration – but “a better Eccles,” phrased in a direct quote from one local man at an early consultation event.​

Matthews told Whelan that residents want Church Street, named for St Mary’s Church (regarded as the oldest Grade I‑listed building in Greater Manchester), to be revitalised “back to what it was,” with people and homes returning so that the town centre’s economy can revive accordingly: “Getting people back in and homes back in there will drive the economic growth of the town centre.”​

How will the town centre be redesigned?

The physical redesign of Eccles, as outlined in the Place North West article, rests on three interconnected ideas: housing density, permeability, and connectivity.​

The plan envisages more than 3,000 residents living in the town‑centre area, providing a stable consumer base for independent retail, cafés, restaurants, and other food and beverage uses, rather than relying on national chains or a single large shopping centre.​

Traffic‑engineered barriers, including a confusing one‑way system, are scheduled to be de‑engineered, with new pedestrian crossings and improved links between Albert Street and Church Street via Vicarage Walk and Church Square.​

Long‑term ambitions include improving connections southwards to the Manchester Ship Canal and northwards to Monton, Ellesmere Park, and local healthcare facilities – areas that the M602 motorway effectively severed from Eccles in the 1970s.​

What housing mix is being promised?

Tenure mix emerges as a central theme in the Place North West coverage, with Jon Matthews warning that “if it is all expensive apartments or all social housing the project will fail.”​

He told Dan Whelan: “We see a really wide breadth of tenure and people because we want to attract old people, families, and young people. We don’t see it as a middle‑class ghetto or a social ghetto. We see it as something which represents the wide diversity and demographic of Eccles.”​

The intention is to mirror the existing social fabric of Eccles, rather than creating a monolithic typology of homes, and to avoid the kind of exclusionary patterns that have dogged some other regeneration schemes elsewhere in the region.​

How is Muse addressing gentrification concerns?

Gentrification is explicitly raised in the article as a risk, with Alex Vogel admitting that the balance between regeneration and gentrification is “difficult” to strike.​

As reported by Whelan, Vogel said the aim is to create a place that can “accommodate current residents and attract new ones who might not have considered it as a place to live before,” while preserving Eccles’ community, culture, heritage, and identity “rather than just going, okay, we’ll throw Gail’s in there.”​

The reference to Gail’s, a national coffee‑shop chain often cited by critics as a marker of gentrification in neighbourhoods adapting to new middle‑class influx, underlines the sensitivity around chain‑store incursion versus independent, locally‑owned businesses.​

How does transport and connectivity feature in the plan?

Transport is treated in the Place North West article as both a strength and a potential trap. Eccles already enjoys strong rail, tram, and bus links to Manchester city centre, MediaCity, and other parts of Greater Manchester, which Vogel describes as a major asset.​

However, a resident quoted in the article notes that people often use those connections “to get out of Eccles,” and that the regeneration should flip that dynamic so the same links “were used to bring people back into Eccles.”​

The M602 motorway, while enabling fast access in and out, is widely seen as having harmed the town centre’s viability by fragmenting the urban grain and discouraging through‑pedestrian movement. The new design aims to mitigate that by stitching together severed neighbourhoods and improving active‑travel links.​

How does the Greater Manchester political and funding context help?

The Place North West piece situates the Eccles project within the wider Greater Manchester regeneration engine, including the GMCA’s £2bn Good Growth Fund and the political backing of Mayor Andy Burnham.​

As reported by Dan Whelan, Muse has already benefited from more than £100m of Good Growth Fund support for schemes in Stockport, Oldham, Prestwich, Wythenshawe, and Salford Central, and the article notes that Eccles “could be next,” given its status as a town in urgent need of a new lease of life.​

Vogel is quoted saying there is a “big weight of responsibility on the whole team, because we need to get this right. We need to stop that decline,” while Matthews suggests that success in 15 years’ time would be measured by whether someone proudly says, “I’m really proud to live here.”