It was the IRA's biggest bomb - 3,300 lbs of explosives, packed into a lorry left on Corporation Street in the heart of Manchester - and it blew up at 11.20 a.m. on Saturday, June 15th, 1996. It was designed to devastate the heart of the city - and it did.
Mercifully, a warning had been given and police managed to clear 75,000 people from the streets before the bomb went off. But the explosion was so enormous that it shattered windows in every building within a radius of several hundred yards. Over 200 people were injured, ranging from minor cuts to serious lacerations. And when the dust settled, surveyors found that more than 500,000 square feet of retail space and at least 600,000 square feet of offices had been damaged to varying degrees or even destroyed by the blast.
The main casualty was the Arndale Centre, a massive groundscraper and tower built in the early 1970s clad in yellow tiles, known colloquially as "The Superloo." Some Mancunians felt that the IRA had almost done the city a favour by hitting it.
But the Arndale, however unappealing, was - and still is - a hugely successful shopping centre and there was no question of pulling it down. Nonetheless, Manchester quickly realised that it could turn the disaster into an opportunity. Within hours of the explosion, the city's key players came together in a task force to deal with the pressing needs of more than 650 businesses displaced by the bombing, and to restore Manchester's shattered retail core. Just two weeks later, the task force became Manchester Millennium Ltd, under the direction of Mr Howard Bernstein, who is to take over as the city council's chief executive this autumn. He quickly persuaded business leaders the city could be turned around.
Fifteen minutes after arriving in Manchester, the chairman of Marks and Spencer, Lord Seiff, announced it would completely rebuild its devastated premises to create the world's biggest M&S, with 350,000 square feet of retail space. Other investors soon followed suit.
Sir David Trippier, former Tory minister for inner cities and now chairman of Marketing Manchester - set up just two months before the IRA bomb - said this reflected "tremendous confidence" in the city's determination to "rebuild, rejuvenate and reinvent itself, no matter what". Though the bomb caused £300 million worth of damage, the process of rebuilding the city centre is estimated to produce a total investment of £1 billion by the turn of the century. The Lord Mayor, Cllr Gordon Conquest, said Manchester had turned a tragedy into an opportunity. "At the moment, we're at that very boring stage where we've swept away all the debris, but the new buildings aren't there yet. But in 12 months' time or so, the city will be a much bigger, brighter place than it is now."
The city council has the largest Labour group in Britain (84 out of 99 members, with not a single Tory), but it has always worked well with governments of every hue. After the bombing, Mr Michael Heseltine, then deputy prime minister, became one of Manchester's most stalwart supporters. Just one month after the explosion, he inaugurated an international urban design competition to produce a master plan. In November 1996, a consortium led by EDAW, a London firm of landscape architects, was awarded the contract.
Mr Nick Johnson, a young chartered surveyor whose firm was part of the winning consortium, believes it was almost a backhanded compliment to Manchester that the IRA had chosen to bomb it rather than, say, Birmingham, Leeds or Nottingham. It was a mark of Manchester's success. Without the bomb, he thinks it would have been more difficult to "reinvent" the city centre, which is what the master plan set out to do by inserting glass-covered streets in the Arndale Centre, with bars and restaurants to attract night-time activity, and new pedestrian streets and public spaces. The M&S store is already under construction along a new street which is to link the upmarket shops around St Ann's Church with Manchester's modest cathedral. "It will be the first pedestrian shopping street in Europe anchored by a church at one end and a cathedral at the other", Mr Johnson said.
His own remit is a £40 million visitor attraction called Urbis, housed in a dramatic modern building which will provide "intellectually robust infotainment" based on the theme of cities, popular culture and the fact that Manchester itself was the first city of the industrial age. Urbis, which will be kitted out with the latest in "virtual reality", is intended to provide a "cultural counterpoint" to all the commercial activity. It will be complemented by a huge entertainment complex now being built behind the retained facade of Robert Maxwell's former Mirror Group offices in Manchester. Behind it, there are plans for a transportation centre inspired by the airport terminal ambience of Belfast's Europa Centre bus station. Manchester's conversion into a "cafe society" will also help, of course. Cllr Pat Karney, Dublin-born chairman of the city council's special committee for the city centre, points out that the number of cafΘ-bars in the area has more than doubled in recent years.
Much of this transformation is due to Manchester's discovery of Barcelona in 1992, when city councillors visited the Catalan capital as part of their campaign to host the Olympic Games in 2000. There, it dawned on them that urban regeneration is about jobs and wealth creation and they all came back saying "we could do that".
Councillors are also committed to making Manchester more "European" by extending its Metrolink light rail system and attracting young professionals to live in apartments throughout the central area.
"Though we don't look back on it with any gratitude, the IRA bomb did give us a historical opportunity to redesign the city centre, which doesn't often happen", says Cllr Karney. According to Mr Bernstein, "we already knew what was right and wrong with the city centre. All the big players had sat down and talked about it nine months earlier. So when the bomb went off, we already knew what to do. It was dead easy, really".
Manchester never loses a chance to promote itself, even though Mr Johnson blanches at "mediocre" slogans, such as "Manchester - We're Up and Going." His own catchphrase is "Made in Manchester", applied to everything from Oasis to Kellogg's cornflakes. What's also made in Manchester is an incredible team spirit, a sense in which everyone feels they share in the city's success. There is also a tremendous tolerance, as evidenced by the fact that its first Irish Lord Mayor was elected as long ago as 1923. And the Irish Centre received "just a few abusive calls" after the IRA bomb.
"There's a good mix of communities and we all work together", said Ms Rose Morris, its Tyrone-born chairwoman. "In July, we'll be hosting the United Nations of Manchester dinner." An Irish World Heritage Centre is also planned for the city that suffered an IRA-inflicted disaster two years ago today.