Will Manchester’s suburbs take centre stage in the City’s next development boom?

Mancunians are no strangers to development.

We crane our necks to see new skyscraper summits, walk around building sites, and gaze at cranes in Mancunian Way traffic.

Developers initially moved into Manchester when city centre land was plentiful, and there was a pragmatic council ready to help build homes. Those developers stayed because housing demand rocketed, giving them ample opportunity to invest in, and profit from, the second city.

But as more developers came in, more towers shot up, and more residents moved in, one thing began to run out: Land.

Parcels of land large enough for big redevelopment projects in the city centre have become rarer, pushing developers to the edge of town.

Victoria North

FEC has Victoria North, a huge 20-year project to build 15,000 homes for 35,000 people at a cost of £3.88 billion over 155 hectares, where 30-odd-storey towers are springing up around Red Bank. In nearby Cheetham Hill, a 25-storey tower was given planning permission last year, with the promise of more to come.

On the city centre’s southern border, a 29-storey tower block is set for Ardwick, as part of a much wider project to give thousands of students a taste of city living.

Moston, Holt Town and Wythenshawe

But soon developers will go even further than the fringes of the city centre, eyeing up suburbs like ‘Moston, Holt Town, and Wythenshawe’, according to Colin Thomasson — the man with £1 billion in his pocket.

Colin is well-placed to know what developers want. He’s an executive director at CBRE, which advises the Greater Manchester Property Venture Fund (GMPVF) where to invest its money, which comes from the Greater Manchester Pension Fund. The £900m fund will soon surpass the £1b mark, so there’s plenty to play with.

The stated aim of the GMPVF is to generate income for investors and contribute to economic growth.

It currently invests around 70 percent of its cash into commercial property projects, with the remainder in housing schemes. That will soon change, as fund officials say the intention is to grow the residential portfolio.

Colin believes the city centre will see ‘continued towers, continued high density’ living in the next decade. However, there are reasons why town isn’t as attractive a place to build in now.

“Just because a developer can get planning consent for 60, 70, 80 storeys doesn’t mean, necessarily, that it makes sense to build them,” Colin explains in an interview with the Manchester Evening News. “Because what’s happened in the last few years is the build cost of building 80 storeys has got so high that sometimes the economics don’t make any sense.

“Actually, sometimes you look at it and you think you are better off building 40 storeys than 80, because the cost of building 80 can potentially be a lot more. So it doesn’t necessarily always follow that just building greater density leads to greater profit, greater land value.”

Manchester Town Hall redevelopment

Inflation in the construction industry hit 44 percent for some post-pandemic projects like Manchester town hall, and the Building Cost Information Service estimates inflation in the sector will rise by 17 percent in the next half-decade.

Land values in the city centre have also risen, meaning developers’ margins are usually in the single-digit-percentage points, a far cry from the ‘25 percent’ Colin saw at the start of his career.

Beetham Tower replicas… in Wythenshawe?

However, a proliferation of reasons not to build in the city centre doesn’t mean Beetham Tower replicas will soon spring up in Wythenshawe, Colin adds.

Developers will soon start going even taller on the fringes of the city, he thinks, saying ‘it’s entirely possible’ a suburb like Hulme is ‘going to see is certain development being done at a slightly higher density than where it is at the moment’.

“So if they’re building six, seven, eight storeys, they may well go to 12, 14, or 20,” he says. Similar size buildings are unlikely to appear further afield though.

He continues: “Once you go further out than [city centre fringe] what you tend to see is that it becomes much more suburban housing, where you’ve got lower rise, lower density, greater green space, greater public realm, the value of the land is less [but] you have to commute into town a bit more.”

That being said, Colin thinks previously maligned areas in north Manchester will start attracting more money: “Go out to Moston, or somewhere. You’re only two or three tram stops from the centre of Manchester.

“It’s, like, nine minutes and yet you have a lot of area. It’s not like you’ve got postage stamps, you’ve got a lot of area you could redevelop.”

‘the next five to ten years could be another really good period for the city’

Development in suburbs like ‘Moston, Holt Town, and Wythenshawe’, combined with even higher density city centre towers are why Colin feels ‘the next five to ten years could be another really good period for the city’.

But it also underscores the fact that the ‘future now is these areas beyond the city centre’ — and as high as Manchester’s ambitions might be, developers are still limited by land.