Love Boutique has been a popular choice for punters for decades
Love Boutique in the Northern Quarter
The original home of the Northern Quarter’s last remaining sex shop is set to be demolished.
Shop units at 78-80 Tib Street are ‘deteriorated’ and ‘in disrepair’ with ‘structural failings’, developers Lau Yuk Ltd said in a planning application to raze the buildings and replace it with a four-storey commercial block.
They were once home to adult stores Big In Amsterdam and Love Boutique, well-known adult stores in the city centre neighbourhood. Love Boutique is still standing on nearby Hilton Street, the last of its kind in the Northern Quarter.
The area was once known to be a hub for sex shops, but they began to be priced out as developers moved into the trendy part of town 20 years ago, owner Colin Gibson told the Manchester Evening News last year.
How the 78-80 Tib Street plans might look(Image: Lee Evans Partnership for Lau Yuk Ltd via planning documents)
“There wouldn’t be a Northern Quarter without the sex shops. Back then all it was was sex shops and bars,” he recalled.
“But I remember one day walking down towards the arts and craft market. I’d not seen a customer all morning, but down there it was absolutely rammed with people sitting outside, eating and drinking. That’s when I realised – this is the change.
“Then around 2007-2008 you started noticing the shutters coming down on Oldham Road. That was when the buildings started coming down and the apartments started going up.”
The trend for adding more apartments to the traditionally retail and entertainment district has continued, with a 32-storey skyscraper opening on the other side of the neighbourhood recently.
Another view of how the 78-80 Tib Street plans might look(Image: Lee Evans Partnership for Lau Yuk Ltd via planning documents)
Debate over this ‘gentrification’ was exposed in a three-year-long Night and Day Cafe row, which saw one of the Northern Quarter’s original bars take Manchester council to court over a noise abatement notice issued in 2021. When the case finished in 2024, a judge ruled the notice should remain in place, but be dealt with using Night and Day’s suggested methods.
However, no apartments are proposed at 78-80 Tib Street, with developers hoping to open a restaurant on the ground floor, retail space higher up on the first and second storeys, and an events area on the third.
You can view and comment on the plans online here until February 23.