The Haçienda: the club a record label built, and lost £18 million on
Opened by a record label that could not really afford it, on a bet about what a nightclub could be - and it took Manchester's club culture with it when it finally closed.
A record label's nightclub
The Haçienda opened on 21 May 1982, conceived by Rob Gretton and financed by Factory Records, New Order and label boss Tony Wilson - a nightclub built by a record label rather than a promoter, which shaped almost everything unusual about how it was run. Designer Ben Kelly, recommended by graphic designer Peter Saville, built an interior that looked nothing like a conventional club of the era. The opening night, with comedian Bernard Manning performing to a crowd that did not want him, is remembered as exactly the mismatch it sounds like.
Nude, Hot, and Madchester
By 1986 the Haçienda had become one of Britain's earliest house music clubs. Nude, its Friday night hosted by Mike Pickering and Graeme Park, built the reputation that Hot - the acid house night that launched in July 1988 - then turned into the centre of what the press started calling Madchester.
The money never worked
The club's own commercial problem was baked into what made the scene it hosted so significant: ecstasy replaced the alcohol sales a nightclub is supposed to run on, and the venue lost money for most of its life as a result. New Order's Peter Hook said in 2009 that the Haçienda lost up to £18 million across its later years, on top of real security and drug-related problems that came with the crowd it drew.
The club lost its entertainments licence in June 1997, and closed for the last time on 28 June that year.
What stands there now
The building was demolished in 2002. The Haçienda Apartments, a residential development by Crosby Homes, now occupies the site on Whitworth Street West - a developer paying to license a closed club's name for a block of flats, the same move Dalston Square made with Labyrinth Tower on the other side of the country.