Work begins on UK’s £250,000,000 luxury water park
The construction of a £250,000,000 luxury swimming pool and water park, featuring swim-up bars and water lagoons, has kicked off on the outskirts of Manchester.
Due to open in 2025, Therme Manchester will also boast 35 waterslides and an adults-only area once it’s completed.
It will be the first site in the UK run by Therme (pronounced term-ay), after a number of resorts in Germany and one outside Bucharest that has been described as Romania’s biggest visitor attraction.
The leisure company anticipates the new 28-acre resort becoming the most visited water-based attraction in Europe within five years of its opening.
As well as the 35 slides, it will have 25 separate swimming pools, a wave pool and more than 30 steam rooms and saunas.
And the whole thing will be split into four ‘zones’, each offering a different angle on the company’s German leisure and wellbeing ethos.
- Galaxy, a ‘fun, family area’ which blends ‘active play and relaxation’
- Palm, which focuses on relaxation and rejuvenation and is only for those aged 16+
- Elysium, named after the Ancient Greek concept of heaven, which will be the UK’s largest luxury spa
- Genesis, a ‘completely new concept in the world of wellbeing’, will involve therapy programmes that have been personally designed ‘with the help of advanced body scanners and expert therapists’
There will also be an enormous ‘wellbeing garden’ in the shape of a two-acre rose, which will ‘act as a focal point for socialising, learning and discovery’.
As well as the swim-up bars, which allow people to order cocktails while still neck-deep in water, a range of cafes and restaurants will also be available.
All of it will be fitted beneath enormous glass domes, meaning people will be able to have a splash around or a massage whatever the weather or time of year.
No details about prices have been released yet. However, they are likely to be a little more expensive than Bucharest, where an all-day, access-all-areas pass costs the equivalent of just over £25 (or around £29 at weekends).
Nor are opening times confirmed – but in Bucharest, that all-day pass allows you to swim from 9.30am to 11.30pm on weekdays or 8am to midnight on weekends.
James Whittaker, Peel L&P Group Development Director, said: ‘The creation of Therme Manchester will bring an accessible, yet world-class health and wellbeing attraction to the people of Greater Manchester and beyond.
‘It will transform TraffordCity, bring fantastic employment opportunities as well as bolster the regional economy including tourism and be a key contributor to the Northern Powerhouse.’
The resort will be built on the site of EventCity, a conference venue at the Trafford Centre which closed in 2021 just ten years after opening.
Anyone wanting to travel there from Manchester city centre will just have to hop on a Metrolink tram heading east, with a stop just a few metres away from what will become the entrance.
People in Scotland who aren’t willing to travel so far south for a dip might be in luck, as Therme is also planning to open a new venue in Glasgow.
If approved, the £100,000,000 spa retreat would be built beside the Riverside Museum on the banks of the Clyde.
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