Not only is Mark Ryder emerging as one of mixed-use development’s staunchest critics, he thinks he can be its saviour.
Meeting the young chief executive of ISIS Waterside Regeneration at his modern offices at Paddington Central, he is eager to sell his vision for urban renewal.
It is fitting that his office at the Development Securities scheme is a stone’s throw from the Grand Union Canal; ISIS’s raison d’etre is to regenerate Britain’s inland waterways and turn murky canals into ideal settings for new property.
As far as Ryder is concerned, “sustainability” has become a cliché and mixed-use development is little more than a ploy to appease planners. Both concepts, he says, are failing to revive the UK’s urban space. Ryder wants a drastic re-think – and he wants ISIS to spearhead it.
“Over the past ten years there has been a renaissance in urban living and it has achieved a lot for our cityscapes,” he says. “But it has only scratched the surface. It has neither created communities nor maximised the value of places.”
Putting the market right
Enthusiastic, rather than arrogant, Ryder is unafraid to say what he thinks is wrong in the market, and how his young company can step in and prove it has the right ideas for change.
The crux of his vision is that a wide cross section of society, families included, could be drawn into our urban centres if the right types of properties are delivered. Given free reign by British Waterways, Ryder insists his niche market of waterside regeneration can make a huge difference to Britain’s towns and cities.
In a relaxed open-necked shirt rather than the regulation pin-striped suit, Ryder is not a standard chief executive. At just 35, he is something of a high achiever; a career in planning law led to ING Real Estate boss Ian Pearce giving him a job at London and Amsterdam developments in 2000, and just two years later, British Waterways, the body that controls the UK’s 2,000 mile inland waterway network, headhunted him for its new venture.
ISIS was launched at the government’s Urban Summit in 2002 by British Waterways, AMEC developments and Morley Fund Management’s Igloo Fund, with £100m behind it (RBS has since come on board and matched this amount with debt funding).
Often erroneously seen in the market as “British Waterway’s joint venture”, Ryder concedes that the company has a lot of work ahead. But he is clear that ISIS has a life of its own, and although 50% of its returns are piled back into the waterways, this is no joint venture.
ISIS is on site with its first development only this summer, having spent its first four years assembling sites, winning planning consents and marketing itself. But now is Ryder’s time to prove just what he says ISIS is capable of.
“I appreciate that until we deliver our first schemes, the jury will be out,” he says.
There is £1.5bn of property planned, starting with a regeneration of Manchester’s Ashton canal, with 14 other schemes planned in places such as Glasgow, Leeds, Birmingham and Nottingham (see panel, p86).
Muddy canals in neglected parts of towns might not be every developer’s dream canvass. However, Ryder insists he has potential goldmines on his hands: “What ISIS does is not easy,” he laughs, “but our job is to create destinations from wasteland.”
With nothing but plans to show the market at this stage, Ryder is perhaps best known for his views on how mixed-use development can be saved from the doldrums.
His gripe is that short-term, profit-driven
developers are squandering opportunities for urban renewal on thoughtless mixed-use schemes. He blasts uninspiring blocks of flats with badly designed commercial space tacked on as an afterthought.
“The problem with current mixed use is that I don’t believe it is mixed use,” he says. “Its driver is residential and the design of the commercial space is ignored so it limits the type of users.”
He reserves praise for developers such as niche players Midland & City Developments, whose design he admires, and Argent, for its long-term approach to developments.
Central to his vision is a concept he sums up as “buy to live”. In order to make mixed -use development work, he argues that the standard apartments that usually end up as buy-to-let properties need to be replaced with a real alternative for families.
“If you just focus on the investors and the yuppies you don’t provide the footfall to make your ground floor work. Outside London we are seeing an oversupply of one and two bedroom apartments in identikit blocks,” he argues.
ISIS is yet to prove that it is more than just another housebuilder creating hype for its developments, but market players say that if it can get city living right, it has huge potential.
Savills’ head of research and mixed-use specialist Yolande Barnes says: “We have to broaden the appeal to everybody. It’s a huge challenge, and it will be interesting to see how ISIS copes.”
Ryder insists he has the ideas to back up the hype. At the company’s proposed Islington Wharf scheme, for instance, he says there are 40 different apartment types including “two key” apartments; effectively two flats within one, which can be sub-let and re-taken at the owners’ need.
Perhaps the yardstick by which to judge Ryder and ISIS will be whether the company can really draw families into city-centre developments. Attracting the right mix of people, he believes, will be the key to cracking the mixed-use conundrum.
“ISIS is challenging the way it’s been done to date,” he says. “We passionately believe there is a bigger market out there.”
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1970 Born in Reading 1991 Graduates as a chartered town planner from Manchester University 1993 Qualifies as a solicitor from the University of West England in Bristol 1996 Joins Berwin Leighton Paisner solicitors 2000 Joins London & Amsterdam developments (now ING Real Estate development) as director 2002 Appointed chief executive of ISIS Waterside Regeneration |
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Lifestyle Married with two sons, lives in the Cotswolds. Interests include golf, sailing, shooting, triathlons, mountain-biking. |
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June 2002 ISIS Waterside Regeneration is founded. Backed by British Waterways, AMEC Developments and Morley Fund Management’s Igloo Fund October 2002 ISIS is officially launched at the government’s first Urban Summit April 2005 Wins first planning consent for Islington Wharf in Manchester June 2006 First development on-site at Islington Wharf |
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● Islington Wharf, Manchester With 40 apartment types ranging from 600 sq ft one-bedroom flats to four-bedroom family homes, ISIS plans to start on site this June with its regeneration of the Ashton canal. The 3-acre site will house 500 apartments, a hotel and 17,000 sq ft of commercial space |
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● Granary Wharf, Leeds On site this autumn, with completion by the end of 2007, the emphasis for this 2.6-acre site is environmental friendliness, with around 70,000 sq ft of public space. It will also include 260 apartments, a 300-bed hotel and 32,000 sq ft of commercial space |
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● Dundas Wharf, Glasgow As part of its wider Speirs Locks regeneration (the project that chief executive Mark Ryder says will make ISIS’s mark), its residential and leisure building, Dundas Wharf, will be on site this autumn with completion by late 2007 |
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● Other schemes at the planning stages include further phases of Glasgow’s Speirs Locks; around 1,500 homes at Nottingham Trent Basin in association with English Partnerships; 900 homes and community facilities in Brentford, west London; and Birmingham’s Warwick Bar and Icknield Port Loop regenerations |
