Muse makes development director hire

Mark O’Mullane has been recruited from Lothbury Investment Management to join the urban regeneration company.

O’Mullane was a director with Lothbury, where he was charged with redeveloping the company’s £400m commercial assets portfolio. Throughout his nearly 20-year-long career in development, O’Mullane also worked at Avison Young’s Manchester office.

His new role as development director at Muse Developments will see O’Mullane relocate from London. He will be based out of Muse’s North West office at Riverside House in Salford.

At Muse, O’Mullane will be focused on delivering the £2.5bn Salford Crescent.

The 240-acre Salford Crescent project comprises 3,000 homes, more than 1m sq ft of innovation space and 1m sq ft of offices and retail space. There will also be a multi-modal transport hub constructed. English Cities Fund, a joint venture between Muse, Homes England, and Legal & General, is the developer for the scheme.

An environmental impact assessment scoping report for the first phase of Salford Crescent last month.

O’Mullane said he was “incredibly excited” to join the Muse team.

“I’m looking forward to returning to the region and working with the incredibly talented team here to make a positive impact on the communities we work in,” he said.

Muse board director Phil Mayall said O’Mullane was joining “at a really exciting time for the business”.

“Mark is an excellent fit for the team, bringing a wealth of experience and a real passion for creating vibrant, sustainable places for communities,” Mayall said.

Muse is part of Morgan Sindall Group. In the company’s half-year results, Muse reported an operating profit of £7.3m and an order book and pipeline of £2.2bn. The same report shared that Morgan Sindall had received a letter from the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities requesting that Muse commit to the government’s “developer pledge” about cladding remediation – a move that Morgan Sindall said would cost the company £40m to £50m.