UKH

Watched this last night, fascinating, if you live/work nearby/ know the city...highly recommended.

I felt for Anne ( what a find for a TV programme)who was basically saying the recent developments in Ancoats etc were excellent but was now being faced with the same redvelopment issue.

All this before Covid, I wonder how this will impact on continued developement.

Have you seen the first episode as well from last week?  I think it is a well made and balanced piece of television.  It presents all sides of the story but leaves the viewers to make their own judgements.

Going to watch it.I hope there is a happy ending to the Lifeshare charity search over the coming episodes.

I've only seen the first episode so far, but will catch up.

I must declare an interest, as I have done some work with Capital & Centric and I understand that one of my sites is seen, but not named (deal isn't signed yet) in one of the later episodes.

I thought it was a little one dimensional and speaking to others involved in property and policy in the city and across the city region, I was alone in that view. It tried very hard to present "a tale of two cities" when in reality it is much more complex than that. In reality it is government policy that works against affordable housing, rather than developers, not that developers are necessarily angels in this.

I understand a number of developers were interested in getting involved, but once they knew Capital & Centric were involved, feared that they would be painted as the unacceptable face of the industry, to be fair, in some cases they possibly are. Capital & Centric are probably better than most, but they are also excellent at PR.

I will be interested to see if it becomes a little filled out in its narrative.

I’ve got an architect mate who specialises in office buildings, another who’s fairly senior in Manc civic planning. Consensus between them is all bets are off for central business districts post CV19. I certainly wouldn’t want to be heavily invested in redeveloping a large swathe of city centre in the current climate

Bruntwood might have been a better fit......long history there of involvement with Manchester instead of a relative newbie.must admit I thought that he was doing things a bit close to the bone when the issue about the wooden flooring in the mill was highlighted. The builders comments about it being like balsa wood were good.I wonder how he is doing at the moment.Clearly his PR was top notch.

A few years ago I had an American business acquitance who lived in Boston stay in the city for a couple of days and he loved it and could not get over how much development was going on.His family were Portugeuse and he found some unusal sherry in one of the places on Deansgate.He has never forgotten the experience.

My wife's business just moved office about 2 weeks before Covid into one of the new blocks near Home.

They are all working from home now.

It will be interesting to see over the next few weeks what happens at the Uni's.

Suspect characters like Tim Heatley make for slightly ‘cooler’ TV than most of the Bruntwood directors; many of whom are friends BTW, so I can say that...

Bruntwood's product is primarily the office market, rather than residential.

Fair point.

I live in a large village 14 miles from the centre. Loads of mates were enduring two hours of commuting, 5 days a week. Most of them report that working from home hasn’t had much impact on productivity and none of them can see things going back to the way they were.

Yeah, I'm onsite, there's an average of 4 in a day at the moment (30 pre-covid). We've just has a meeting (online) and agreed productivity is a normal levels. In our case this wouldn't have worked, say 5 years ago, but everyone having fibre broadband at home has made the difference.

This could be the silver lining..... housing shortage solved by converting offices to homes?

 The last 20 years has seen an explosion in the number of people living in central Manchester, a lot of that has been fuelled by people not wanting to put up with the frustration inherent in having to commute. This sparked a virtuous circle, more people = more restaurants, bars, gyms, entertainment, etc, all servicing the new residents. The new reality is that thousands of office workers have woken up to the fact that they don’t need to work out of offices. We’re all stood on the precipice of a huge Global downturn and an awful lot of businesses are bound to be wondering if prestigious city centre offices are an extravagance they can no longer afford.  

The big question now is whether city centre living is still going to be attractive without city centre jobs.

For many the attraction is city life, rather than just proximity to work. As an example, my sister lived in the city commuting out, she is currently doing similar in Liverpool. 
 

Totally agree, it’s just cities are in a constant state of flux and CV19 has just chucked a huge spanner in the works. One  of the consequences is that a shed load of the little bars, cafes and restaurants, that make city centre living so attractive, are about to go bust. 

This is kind of your area of expertise (I think?), what do you reckon?

Sort of. I think the city will be fine, it’s dynamic, it will evolve. Some people will lose some money, but other opportunities will come from it. My big interest is the towns in Manchester’s influence, can they benefit from this changing city dynamic. The city centre developers are all looking at opportunities in places like Rochdale, Bolton and Stockport.

Coincidently, from the BBC this morning:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-53925917

I think the jobs will still be there, but people won't be expected to attend the office all the time. I reckon this strikes the right note and is a realistic in terms of what will happen if the Covid situation improves.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/aug/26/firms-urged-to-find-middle...

So if you are attending the office flexibly it might be attractive to be close to work.

If you look at it from the flip side, I think there'll be people who will want to live somewhere busy if working from home. For young especially I could imagine spending most of your life in suburbia (working day and night) could be dull.

Not quite the same though are they. All 3 for example have been flat on their backsides for ages. The only 1 I can think of that has seen some development is Alty becuase of the clever redevelopment of the market ( but there is loads of money there anyway and it was ripe for it).

My local town is Warrington and I went to the new market last week, its great, but it probably will never attract people form the south side as they tend to ignore the centre.

Manchester is still the place to be and as you say is the dynamic hub of the area.Love the place.

Me too. My main concern is homeless. As I'm sure you know there's been a steep rise homeless living in the city centre over the last 10 years, most with mental health problems. It's only going to get worse with the coming economic hit. I don't think 'affordable housing' will help these people, it's so far out of reach for them. We need to invest in social service.... not just to help people but for the sake of the city.