The Subplot | Manchester’s lofty ambitions, Liverpool office activity, industrial interference

Welcome to The Subplot, your regular slice of commentary on the business and property market from across the North of England.

THIS WEEK

• Dan Whelan asks if the sky is the limit for Manchester’s soaring cityscape
• Elevator pitch: your weekly rundown of who and what is going up, and who is heading the other way

HOW FAR CAN THE TRANSFORMATION OF MANCHESTER’S SKYLINE GO?

This week saw prolific developer Renaker unveil plans for Manchester’s first 70-storey building as part of the ongoing regeneration of Great Jackson Street.

Coming in at 213 metres, it is taller than the 201-metre South Tower – another Renaker scheme – which has been the city’s tallest building since 2018.

The continued upward trajectory of Manchester’s skyline is no surprise. Land is scarce, which means if the city is to stand any chance of providing the homes its booming population demands, the only way is up…right?

No limits?

Manchester now has two towers taller than 200 metres, with at least one more rumoured to be on the way this year. But is the ground beneath Manchester fertile enough for a 300-metre building to grow?

Known as supertalls, these 300-metre-plus skyscrapers on steroids can be found in places like New York, China, and the Middle East.

Currently, the Shard in Central London is the UK’s only supertall. Height restrictions there due to the proximity of the capital’s City Airport mean that going much higher in future could be out of the question.

Manchester has no such restrictions, but between the city’s relatively meagre – on global terms – property values and the premium that comes with constructing tall buildings, the likelihood of seeing a supertall within the inner ring road is slim, according to industry experts.

“It won’t happen in my lifetime,” says Ian Simpson, one half of SimpsonHaugh Architects, which has designed seven of the eight tallest buildings currently standing in Greater Manchester – including six for Renaker.

Deloitte partner John Cooper, another of Renaker’s trusted partners, believes the current project might be pushing the limit of what is achievable.

“We won’t go much taller than 70 storeys in my career,” he says.

The chief culprit for lack of supertall ambition in Manchester is profitability. It simply doesn’t stack up.

“I just can’t see it from a viability perspective,” Cooper says, regarding skyscrapers taller than 70-ish storeys. “I can’t see anyone being able to get higher than that.”

Debating design

Viability doesn’t only impinge on height, it also limits an architect’s creativity.

When Simpson’s plans for the latest skyscraper for Renaker emerged, people were divided.

Some loved the proposals, which were inspired by a lighthouse, while others gave the thumbs down, labelling them boring glass boxes.

When confronted with the criticism, Simpson shrugs. “If you put your head above the parapet, it will get shot at,” he says.

SimpsonHaugh designed One Blackfriars in London, a 165-metre residential tower that Simpson describes as “the most beautiful tall building in the country”.

The margins to develop something similar outside the capital simply aren’t there, he says.

“The sales values there were £2,000/sq ft so even a studio was a million quid. When you’ve got those sorts of values, you can build those sorts of buildings.”

By way of comparison, sales values in Manchester vary between £400/sq ft and £600/sq ft, depending on who you ask.

The affordability question

As well as stunting growth and providing a barrier to expansive design, tight margins are also stymieing the delivery of something far more important.

Making a scheme stack up and meeting a local authority’s affordable housing targets are tricky businesses, even for a company with Renaker’s expertise.

Like other projects in its portfolio, the developer’s latest project proposes a lot of homes, some 2,388 in fact, none of which are affordable. Ultimately it will be up to Manchester City Council to push back on this point.

In the past, the council has called for planning reform to give it more powers to demand that private developers deliver affordable housing.

Until that happens, the city will have to be happy with other benefits captured through the Section 106 process, such as the school Renaker is delivering at Crown Street.

Speaking to Subplot last year, Cllr Bev Craig, Leader of Manchester City Council said it is sometimes “too easy to focus on the perceived negatives of development in our city” and urged us to remember the positive impact the schemes can have.

If not Ren then who?

If Renaker had said ‘yes’ to Subplot’s requests for an interview, the issue of viability and affordable homes is one that certainly would have been broached.

Alas, Renaker managing director Daren Whitaker is not a man for the limelight.

Perhaps it is this approach, concentrating on the task at hand rather than wasting energy on public relations, that has allowed Renaker’s reputation as a relentless deliverer to emerge organically.

“We have been incredibly lucky to have a developer like Renaker,” Simpson says. “[Without them] we wouldn’t have built anything because you need that skill base to know how to build a 52-storey building without it costing an arm and a leg.”

Indeed, without Renaker, Manchester’s skyline would look drastically different.

Dreams of density

While Renaker has received its fair share of criticism for not providing on-site affordable housing, Whitaker can happily say he has never been embroiled in a debate around Green Belt

Maybe that is the quid pro quo.

To Simpson, building tall in cities makes good economic sense and goes some way to addressing Manchester’s chronic shortage of housing.

For him, density is the name of the game.

“We feel very strongly that what Manchester needs is people. I think we need to get to 200,000 people living in the city centre,” he says.

Manchester currently has around 65,000 city centre residents and the idea of a bustling, dense city is something the architect passionately believes in.

“I think we could probably have at least twice as many towers,” Simpson says. “I don’t believe there’s a saturation point.”

If the idea is to attract as many people to live in Manchester city centre as possible, building tall offers a viable solution to the housing crisis.

By the time both Great Jackson Street and Trinity Islands are complete, Renaker will have built enough homes to accommodate the population of Wilmslow, according to Simpson.

Indeed most Wilmslow residents would actually be able to afford to relocate to a Renaker tower should they wish. Residents in similarly-sized, less affluent areas like Ashington, would not.

Confidence or arrogance?

It has long been espoused that tall buildings are a symbol of a progressive, confident city.

For Deloitte’s John Cooper, the city’s soaring skyline is an indication of how far Manchester has come in recent years.

“When Beetham Tower was built in the noughties, it was about moving away from that perception of Manchester as being a dirty old town and the satanic mills, and becoming more modern and progressive,” he says.

Not everyone thinks tall buildings are good for brand Manchester.

Jon Silver, a geographer at the University of Sheffield’s Urban Institute, says the theories that underpin the building of skyscrapers are “wedded to an out-of-date economic model”.

He argues that they are bad for the city because they don’t provide affordable homes and rent paid on the apartments often vanishes overseas, rather than being funnelled back into local economies.

Skyscrapers, Silver says, are “not a good way to do urbanism”.

Try telling that to Ian Simpson.

ELEVATOR PITCH

Going up, or going down? This week’s movers

The office market in Liverpool opts for the stairs. Meanwhile, sheds take a tumble downwards.

Liverpool’s office market

Eurovision officially launched in Liverpool this week, while plans for Boxpark’s first venue outside the capital were approved. But it’s not all cheesy music and shipping containers, Liverpool’s office market is also off to a decent start in 2023.

So far, we have seen Direct Line return to the city after a decade-long absence, while Green Switch more than doubled the size of its office at Exchange Station. There is more to come, too, if market whispers are to be believed.

The city is finding new uses for its less prime space – Peel L&P recently let a 9,000 sq ft chunk of Princes Dock to a private hospital, while Cert Property has given up trying to find occupiers at Centric House, opting to convert the property into apartments instead.

All of this is good news, and suggests a proactive and lively market. Could long-awaited activity on a pre-let at Pall Mall or a speculative office development at Liverpool Waters be next?

Shed shortage

There are just six months of Grade A industrial supply available in the North West. That’s according to a report by Savills, which states that industrial take-up in 2022 exceeded 7m sq ft.

But actually the picture is better than it seems. The supply of industrial space across the region actually rose 32% year on year in 2022, says Savills.

There is still an imbalance between the region’s supply and its demand. This is evidenced by rising rents, up 13% compared to 2021.

This wonky dynamic is not going to be helped by Whitehall meddling.

This week, Place North West reported that planning inspectors are toying with the idea of removing a 338-acre employment allocation from Warrington Council’s emerging local plan.

The inspectors say Warrington has overestimated how much industrial space it needs, which could mean curtains for 3m sq ft of pipeline proposed by Langtree and Panattoni.

Get in touch with Place North West news@placenorthwest.co.uk