As EG speaks to Tim Heatley, co-founder of Manchester-based real estate developer Capital & Centric, Greater Manchester is days away from being forced into tier-three restrictions.
With Covid-19 infection rates rising across the city region, Whitehall piled the pressure on the combined authority and local councils to move into the highest tier of restrictions. It is a move that will see many businesses close and tightened limits on household mixing and travel. Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, Sir Richard Leese and other local leaders stood together and demanded that the government provides greater financial support to cover the cost – and impact – of entering another lockdown. Such funding will be critical for Manchester City Council, which already faces a £100m gap after covering the costs of the Covid crisis. Come Friday 23 October, Manchester will be a tier-three city, with £60m of additional government funding to help it survive.
Salford-born-and-bred Heatley is clear about the devastation that a tier-three local lockdown could cause in the city without appropriate support.
“We want to make sure we safeguard against there being a catastrophic downturn in industries in Greater Manchester and the North,” he says. “The cost will be far greater than the short-term cost of putting a plug in the problem.”
It’s not just “long-lasting, irreparable harm” that could be caused to the local economy should Greater Manchester fail to secure a package of funding, Heatley says. There will likely also be repercussions on the mental health and wellbeing of Mancunians who face closing their businesses and fighting for survival .
Heatley is frustrated about the discrepancies between local lockdowns. “In the South, when cases were climbing [but were not climbing in the North], there was a national lockdown,” he says. “Yet when cases aren’t climbing in the South but climbing in the North, there’s not a national lockdown, there’s just a Northern lockdown… It does feel there’s one rule for one and one for another. Shouldn’t we co-produce an all-inclusive approach?”
Last to benefit, first to suffer
Collaboration is key for Heatley – not just in politics, but in business too. In recent years he has grown the number of partnerships the business has in place with local authorities in preparation for a downturn. Heatley says these partnerships will play an even more critical role for Capital & Centric following the Covid crisis.
As the country enters another recession, Heatley feels like he has “gone full circle” in his property career. He set up his own property company, Centric, as the world spiralled into a global financial crisis in 2008 (Capital & Centric was formed a few years later when Heatley joined forces with Adam Higgins, merging with Capital Properties to become Capital & Centric).
His experience of getting a company off the ground during the financial crisis has put him in good stead, Heatley says. To survive, you must stand out from the crowd and do something no one else is doing, he says.
“We’re a young organisation, full of young people and we’re a younger business,” he adds. “We’re fleet of foot, we can pivot quickly.”
Pivoting is exactly what Heatley plans to do now. Capital & Centric is known for its flagship projects in city centres across the North of England. But a couple of years ago, the company decided to expand its partnerships with the public sector in delivering key regeneration schemes. Since then, the company has made a strategic move to look for opportunities to join forces with local authorities on projects.
So far, the company has partnerships with Rochdale Borough Council to redevelop the former Central Retail Park into a 200-home scheme, called Neighbourhood Rochdale, and with Liverpool City Council, working on schemes including the redevelopment of Littlewoods Building into a film and television hub.
These partnerships were all put in place in anticipation of a downturn, Heatley says. “We wanted to go to those towns [which] aren’t benefiting from the boom as much,” he says. “The towns and suburbs are the last to benefit from a boom and are first to take the hit from a recession.”
Capital & Centric is looking to expand these public-private ventures across the North and beyond. This includes continuing to grow the developer’s presence across the Liverpool city region and Greater Manchester and tapping into the Midlands and West Midlands markets for the first time. Heatley is also looking to the areas around Sheffield, Leeds and other locations that investors might previously have “overlooked”.
“In a recession, it’s even more important that those towns and cities are regenerating, improved, and enhanced,” he says. “We did that because we thought it was a hedge against a boom. If there is a big recession, there will be a pause on prime city centre [schemes]. But in a smaller city or town, it’s a more long-term play.”
Considering that Capital & Centric has made a name for itself in Manchester city centre, through projects such as its 14-storey Jenga-inspired hotel designed by Stephenson Studio and the £250m Kampus scheme including 478 PRS homes, will the developer shift away from its stomping ground? Heatley says the company will continue to deliver “flagship” projects in Manchester, but suggests that the focus will alter.
“Does Manchester need Capital & Centric to make it great? No it doesn’t,” he says. “It’s always been great, and it will be great, and there’s a lot of developers and investors in place to continue to make sure that will be the case. We prefer to go somewhere where we’re challenged, and more needed.”
No regrets
Capital & Centric’s expansion outside of Manchester comes at a time when Heatley has become synonymous with the city through his involvement in the BBC’s Manctopia: Billion Pound Property Boom documentary series.
The series tells the story of Manchester’s growth, with Heatley appearing as the voice of the city’s property industry. He was followed around by cameras for nearly two years, with reels of footage condensed into a number of appearances throughout four hour-long episodes.
He is shown both to care and be concerned about the scale of the challenge ahead of regenerating Manchester city-centre hotspots. In one episode, while showing cameras around Piccadilly East, where flyers pinned to railings advertise local prostitutes, he describes the city as “bashing up against itself”. He adds: “You get the feeling that now the [regeneration] has started, it has to happen. It can’t fail now – too much money has been put into it. It could all go catastrophically wrong if people don’t buy into the vision.”
Does Manchester need Capital & Centric to make it great? No it doesn’t. It’s always been great
But his appearance sparked moments of controversy for viewers, particularly over the developer’s provision of affordable homes. Across Capital & Centric’s Crusader Mill, Kampus and Talbot Mill schemes, no homes have been made affordable.
Heatley was a typical fat-cat developer for some viewers, motivated purely by profit. Several took to Twitter to call Heatley a “parasite”, while one viewer called him “an absolute disgrace” for “moaning about how there’s ‘no profit or motivation’ in building homes people can actually afford”.
The experience has been bittersweet for Heatley. “It’s been emotional,” he says of making the show, adding that there have been people “patting him on the back” for the work he has done in the city, while he has also been “getting some stick” on social media.
Development is a “complicated picture”, Heatley says, and this is especially true when it comes to providing affordable homes. He outlines a new scheme that Capital & Centric is bringing forward in Piccadilly East that will deliver 115 homes, all of which will be affordable.
“Developers aren’t necessarily evil – they have a lot to offer,” he says. “If you want a great city, you need to work alongside the key organisations and key individuals who are able to make that city interesting.”
He does, however, feel the weight of trying to help shake off stereotypes for the sector. “I feel like I’m almost responsible for the property industry, as I’m one of the faces of it to the public,” he says. “You feel an added responsibility.”
Does he regret putting himself in the spotlight via the BBC? “Not really,” he says. “It could have been disastrous in hindsight. They could have absolutely taken us apart and made us look like absolute chumps… But I like a bit of chaos. I think that’s where interesting things happen.”
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