If you could travel back to Manchester city centre in the early 1980s, you would be forgiven for finding it barely recognisable. In place of the buzzing hubs of culture and commerce would be crumbling and abandoned buildings - silent relics of a more prosperous past. The areas around the Manchester Central Convention Centre and Castlefield have been described as being a 'no man's land' back in the 1980s .
To shed some light on the transformation of this historic part of central Manchester, we spoke to Andy Spinoza. A former Manchester Evening News journalist, Andy moved from London to Manchester to study at university in 1979, witnessing the city’s dereliction - and subsequent regeneration - first-hand. READ MORE: The 'hidden village' on top of Manchester's Arndale Centre many never knew existed READ MORE: The lost theme park near Alton Towers that some say was even better He later co-founded City Life - a spiky, mickey-taking, brave, and sometimes reckless, "underground" news, arts and listings magazine before joining the M.
E.N in 1988. Documenting the story of the city’s cultural revolution throughout the '90s, he later jumped ship to PR, forming his own company, Spin Media.
Successful careers in journalism and PR have afforded Andy a unique insight into Manchester's evolution, even prompting him to write a book, Manchester Unspun, published last year. Modestly, he describes his one and only area of expertise as being Manchester city centre, so we asked him about the tr.