“Madchester’s” reputation as a leisure city as taken a knock lately as agents encounter problems filling schemes. By Noella Pio Kivelehan
Manchester’s leisure circuit has seen many trends in recent years. The 1980s “Madchester” club scene, and the growing 1990S restaurant and bar culture, have both given the city a leisure kudos.
But there is a new trend in the city- a declining leisure market.
The saga of the partially occupied
AWG Great Northern leisure and retail scheme, now up for sale, has earned the development the unfortunate media tag of “struggling”.
Questions are still being raised about the time taken to fill all units in the Printworks.
Then there is the failure of SnoWorld. Owners of the scheme, in planning for several years, finally accepted this month that it was never going to succeed as a snow kingdom.
It has been modified from predominantly leisure to a residential/office/retail scheme (see panel). SnoWorld was the last straw for one commentator, who said its failure “shows that the tide has gone out on Manchester’s leisure market”.
And over the last year local and national names have left the market.
Sour grapes
But there are still many in the Manchester market who retain a positive outlook.
They say failing businesses are down to operators treating the Manchester market like a carbon copy of London.
They highlight operators that are expanding, and say negative comments – particularly regarding the Printworks -are just plain old jealousy from disgruntled agents.
Whatever the opinion, most Mancunians will agree their leisure market is “quiet”.
“It is fair to say that the market is flat,” says Tim Westlake-Bryant at Donaldsons. “You have to gauge it on the fact that there’s been a huge leisure development (over 1m sq £t has come to the market in the past couple of years). There was too much, and now there’s going to be a settling down period.
“A lot of leisure units have come onto the market in the past 12 months. If you were to assess that, it would be £tightening,” says Westlake-Bryant.
The majority of units are up for sale privately, with operators still trading.
Questions were being asked two years ago about Manchester’s ability to sustain its phenomenal leisure growth. Most agents pointed specifically to the cinema and health and fitness sectors as examples of saturation.
Jon Nelson, former head of leisure at Chesterton, told EG in April that in the health & fitness market “there is only so much trade to go around, even with a growing city-centre population”.
With a downturn in these leisure markets, there is a realisation that trade is being spread thinly.
Some hold the view that this is not necessarily a bad thing. Westlake-Bryant says poorer concepts are now being weeded out as the public can afford to be fussy.
But local and nationals are also failing. Local names Abbaye and Paparazzi closed last year, as did national chain Fish!, while Chez Gerard’s King Street unit is up for sale. Dunlop Heywood Lorenz is the acting agent.
Dan Davies at Jones Lang LaSalle blames some failures on the arrogance of operators who think that, because their concept worked in London, it will suit all markets.
And Davies has a point. It is universally accepted that the likes of Fish! tried to impose its London ideal on the city.
Proving this, Davies says the restaurant that opened on the former Fish! site is local restaurateur Derek Lilly’s Piccolino’s, now Manchester’s “in place”.
There is a thin line between those national brands that succeed or fail.
The 380,000 sq ft Printworks scheme, owned by the British Airways pension fund, and opened in November 2000, is based on big national names such as Tiger Tiger, Waxy O’Connor’s and Nando’s.
According to the scheme’s agent, London-based Shelley Sandzer, they are all trading extremely well.
But three-and-a-half years on, if deals now on the cards go through, the development will have empty units, while some occupiers have been and gone.
This has prompted several agents to quip that the scheme is “slightly fading”, and it is .”not the best leisure circuit” in town.
Shelley Sandzer, unsurprisingly, rebuts these suggestions. Partner Ted Schama says the Printworks’ success stories are “massive”, and that the site has “firmly established itself as the centre for leisure in Manchester”.
Success stories
There are also new deals. US-based firm Majicorp is taking 4°,000 sq ft in the complex’s basement. In a joint venture with Virgin, it will open live music venue Lucid.
Schama says it is about to sign for the 9,000 sq ft vacant nightclub, which was previously the Buddha Lounge, while an “American- themed Italian restaurant” group is going to sign for an 8,000 sq ft unit. This will leave two units available, totalling 2,500 sq ft.
Unlike AWG’s Great Northern development, however, the Printworks has always managed to fill most of its units.
Great Northern, says Davies, is a “fantastic site”, yet around two-thirds of the 500,000 sq ft project remains empty.
This is because of several factors. In 2000, Kansas-based cinema firm AMC dropped the number of screens it would open from 2’1 to 16, leaving a yet-to-be-filled 40,000 sq ft, and London-based restaurant chain Shoeless: Joe’s has never occupied a prominent 15,000 sq ft unit despite signing a lease.
On a more cynical side are chose who say Morrisons (the developer before being taken over by AWG) was not the most appropriate developer to take on the project.
“Right scheme, wrong tenants. Morrisons didn’t secure the right tenants,” says one agent
The site is now at the centre of an £80m buying bid as AWG has decided to sell.
With a new owner, and the opening of nearby Spinningfields, which will bring thousands of office workers into the area, Great Northern could yet reach the tantalisin! potential chat its cinema complex hints at.
As Insignia Richard Ellis’s Stuart Burdon-Bailey says: ‘~C is establishing a market share as it is growing consistently, despite the unlet scheme.”
Growth would also be tied into a change in the economic market as well.
Parodying its music scene, from the miserablism of the Smiths and Joy Division through the hedonism of Stone Roses to the bad boy image of Oasis, Manchester has shown its ability to adapt and change. And its leisure scene will no doubt follow that pattern.
Westlake-Bryant has the final word: In 12 months, the market will pick up, and there will be operators once again taking space.”
It was to be Manchester’s answer to the French Alps -a ski slope, cinema and 25-storey development called the SnoWorld leisure scheme on the seven-acre site at Middlewood, Salford.
Planning permission was granted in 1999, although nothing happen for a few years as the bottom fell out of the market. But Valley & Vale, the original developer, has gone back to the drawing board and dropped the SnoWorld idea.
On 12 March, after months of work by a partnership of CB Hillier Parker’s agency and planning teams, Reeves Bailey Architects, Valley & Vale and Salford city council, new plans -with a total value of £300m -were submitted to the council.
These include the opening up of the Manchester Bolton Bury canal, which was going to be filled in under the SnoWorld plans.
The masterplan splits 50/50 into residential and commercial in terms of floorspace. Around 20% will be dedicated to leisure, most of which will be around the canal.
Simon Jenkins, who, with his company Beaupre Castle Development, is carrying out the scheme in a joint venture with Valley & Vale, says the leisure element will be mainly bars, restaurants and gyms.
Nick Lee, head of planning at CB Hillier Parker, says the developers are also interested in hotels.
As the site is only 15 minutes walk from Manchester city centre, there is a question of whether it will compete with established leisure outlets.
“There will be competition to a certain extent,” says Jenkins, “but we won’t be a major threat. As we are in this project for the next 10 years, a lot of the initial leisure will be feeding off the office and residential development.
