Green city ambitions, hotelification and Stockport the hot spot – Property breakfast report
Manchester’s ambitions to be a green city region will be front and centre in the city region’s message at the MIPIM property market in Cannes next month.
Attendees also heard from Helen White of Marketing Stockport who told the story of how the town seven miles from Manchester city centre is forging a distinct identity as a commercial and residential destination.
Greater Manchester’s property market has an unstoppable momentum, despite the economy, political uncertainty and changing lifestyles. That was the verdict from a TheBusinessDesk.com property breakfast event held on Thursday morning at Manchester Hall.
Attendees also learned two new buzz words in the sector: ‘hotelification’ of office space – where spaces are rented on as needed basis and ‘resimercial’ where wellness suites and lounge areas are built into new office accommodation at a similar specification to high end residential schemes.
Speakers at the event were:
👤Caroline Baker, Cushman & Wakefield
👤John McCaffery, Alexander & Co Chartered Accountants
👤Helen White, Marketing Stockport
Thanks to sponsors Alexander & Co Chartered Accountants
Key comments:
John McCaffrey: A number of buy to let landlords are exiting the market. And it’s the bigger scale landlords who are coming in and taking over large properties. I think that’s forcing up rents. In certain areas, Manchester is getting a little bit more prestigious, it’s spreading out. In terms of availability and affordability.
Caroline Baker: Manchester feels as though it is on a new level across most sectors. There’s the right amounts of supply of Grade A office space for the level of interest there is in the city centre. People are making different decisions around the size of the space they’re taking. But I think there’s a general consensus now that we don’t have to question the future of the office. We do. We’re social animals who want to be in the office.
Dan Hyde: I’m working on 4 Angel Square in NoMa, and we’ve worked incredibly hard to make sure that it’s a best in class building, not just in Manchester, but UK wide with exceptional operational energy use, fully smart enabled. It will also give the user a better experience of the building. And then at the same time, what we’re also trying to do is capture the kind of hotelification of office space. Occupiers are conscious they want to get people back into the office, and what occupiers looking for now is this added layer of hospitality, I’ve even heard the phrase ‘resimercial’.
Helen White: I’ve heard it said that Manchester is the New London. Well, we like to think that Stockport is the New Manchester. That’s kind of our ambition, when we founded Marketing Stockport, which was 12 years ago now. Stockport wasn’t anything like it is now. It had something of a donut effect, but a dark centre surrounded by richer district centres. The town centre was was really on its knees. Stockport has started to reinvent itself. We’ve seen new businesses come into the area, looking at how we can develop a town centre that is fit for the future that is sustainable for the future. Key though is ambition and collaborative working.
Joe Rigby CBRE: There are still a large amount of transactions being undertaken. The city core was last year, now there’s a real diverse spread of where people are taking space NoMa, Circle Square, St. John’s, ID Manchester, Mayfield, and you look at a map of where we’re working with clients it’s really impressive to see where everyone is located, not just in a single central area, Manchester just seems to be growing up, but also growing out.
Martyn Evans, U+I: We’re building the Mayfield scheme just next to Piccadilly station and we completed the park at the centre of that scheme, which is a really lovely thing to do as a developer. It was six acres of park, quite expensive, but it was very nice to be able to do it first.
