£2bn Spinningfields a ‘jewel in Manchester’s crown’
THE estates director of Manchester’s Spinningfields district has hailed it as the “largest success story of urban regeneration in Europe” with an asset value of £2bn.
Allied London’s Chris Reay was speaking in the wake of the announcement of plans for the Central Village zone for enterprise which will unifty the St John’s neighbourhood with the nearly-complete XYZ building in Spinningfields.
Reay told TheBusinessDesk that although the zone would be a gateway to Spinningfields, there are not going to be large glazed buildings and it is not going to be the home large corporate businesses.
“There will be a hotel (in the Old Granada Studios building), factory theatre, a lot of residential and some commercial workspace element. There will be smaller buildings, smaller streets, smaller companies,” he said.
“Spinningfields is the largest success story of urban regeneration in Europe. If you look at what it was 16 years ago – a series of derelict buildings run down streets.
“It’s an asset worth £2bn that corporate organisations want to be in on. This is the best time to come to Spinningfields.”
Reay pointed to NCC, Shoosmiths and Global Radio coming to XYZ and in the forthcoming 1 Spinningfields Allied London has PwC and Squire Patton Boggs signed up.
“It was massive getting NCC into XYZ – an international technology company headquartered in Manchester,” he continued. “They were going to buy their own land and do their own campus building.
“Everything around Spinningfields put a strong enough case for them stay.”
Reay said a major factor in the success of the estate was that the management of it is kept in house.
“We decided to manage the public realm and set up our own marketing and events team,” he said. “Now we’re looking at how we are going to run the estate for years ahead, and we are looking at major investment.
“We are now at the point in terms of restaurants and bars on Spinningfields where we are going to be 100% let. There are only two units out of 50 available.
“That’s a very strong message about the footfall of the estate and the pull and attraction that these restaurants, shops and bars are doing. We’ve never had a low vacancy rate.
“It’s changed over the last five years from being a high end retail area to high end restaurants and bars. Everyone likes the two lives on Spinningfields. It’s really cool, because you are away from traffic and there is extra security.
“We keep it very clean – it’s a very intensively managed area of the city. No occupiers ever complain to us about the value for money element.
“You can’t compete with us about how well run it is under single ownership. The key thing is we’ve held on to the retail and leisure units and we will continue to own the public realm. We are in charge of how that space is running – it’s quite unique in the city centre.”
