Seoul, the South Korean capital, has one next to its World Cup football stadium. Dubai built one as part of its mission to reclaim the desert. Now Salford, a formerly run-down corner of north-west England, is set to become home to the world’s newest “media city”, the largest purpose-built community of its kind in Europe.
When the first phase of the project opens in 2011, the initial 30-acre development will feature 700,000 sq ft of office space, 250,000 sq ft of homes and 60,000 sq ft of retail and leisure facilities. It will accommodate five BBC departments with 2,500 staff as part of an initiative to move production out of London. About 15,000 jobs will be created in Salford, generating a projected £1.5bn for the regional economy.
I can watch MediaCityUK taking shape from behind the glass façade of The Lowry, the millennium-project arts and entertainment centre. Outside, slate-grey skies evoke the pictures of the city’s most famous son, the artist LS Lowry, whose collected works are on display in the gallery and capture the dour, rain-soaked image of Salford’s industrial past. But today the city is buzzing with expectation. The development is still a long way off completion but some are already breathlessly predicting that MediaCityUK will help Salford rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes of manufacturing decline.
“This is a significant moment,” says Kevin Brady, assistant chief executive of Salford City Council. “It is a challenge to move away from the stereotypical image of the Lowry paintings but I feel we have finally reached the turning point. The decision to build MediaCityUK was a huge boost. I think it has made us all think differently about our vision for the city and how it will raise ambition across the whole community.”
Salford’s erstwhile docklands have been under large-scale redevelopment since the late 1980s, with work concentrated around Salford Quays, where geometric architecture and high-rise cranes dominate the skyline. The arrival of the Lowry in 2000 and the Imperial War Museum North, with its distinctive angular design by the architect Daniel Libeskind, two years later have boosted tourism to the area but Salford Quays still feels eerily quiet after the day trippers take a late-afternoon tram back to Manchester.
MediaCityUK might change all that. The first phase will include three buildings leased from developer Peel Media for the BBC, the anchor tenant; a new Salford University facility; and a site earmarked for a three-star hotel. The initial residential development will be mainly apartments, with the 378 flats ranging from studios at £125,000 to two-bedroom units at £189,000. The four three-bedroom penthouses range from £300,000 to £340,000 and all have already sold off plan.
Although the Quays, located four miles from Manchester City Centre, or 20 minutes by taxi from Manchester airport, is the centrepiece regeneration area, all of Salford’s eight districts are starting to feel the MediaCityUK effect, says Michael McManus, of Prestige Property in the district of Worsley.
“There’s a real buzz but the effect on local house prices still depends on the bulk of people moving into the area,” he says. “If you’re looking to buy now and have the deposit to finance it, you can find a very nice family house at a better price than the traditionally popular areas of Manchester, such as Wilmslow and Didsbury.”
Salford has a wide range of properties, from old terraced houses to five-bedroom mansions. The prices vary widely too, with £80,000 buying a simple, two-bedroom terraced house in Walkden, and up to £350,000 covering a three-bedroom semi-detached property in Worsley, where the desirable M28 postcode comes at a premium price. The latter is the location for a planned scheme by Peel Holdings, the same company behind MediaCityUK, to develop Salford Forest Park, a 1,690-acre site featuring a 6,000-seater oval racecourse, 18-hole golf course and a leisure park.
“Worsley is a prime relocation spot for people looking for bigger family houses and green space,” says McManus, a proud Manchester United season ticket holder with a framed copy of George Best’s birth certificate taking pride of place on his office walls. “It’s just five miles to the Quays, access to the M6 and M60 is easy and the fee-paying Bridgewater School, with its attached primary school, is very well regarded.”
Other parts of Salford are also looking increasingly attractive, with young professional couples heading west to the district of Monton for its period properties and popular high street of shops, cafés and restaurants. Kate Jones, who works in marketing in Manchester, recently bought a three-bedroom house with a garden for £154,000 in Monton, about £50,000 less than a two-bedroom terraced house in the leafy Cheshire district of Didsbury, where she previously lived.
“When we first looked at the property I couldn’t believe we were actually in Salford; my mind’s-eye image didn’t include the canal walks and green space of Monton and Worsley,” she explains as we sip mugs of tea in her tastefully minimalist living room. “Young couples are moving to live alongside people who have been here for 30 years so there’s still a sense of community. As MediaCityUK grows, I think more people will migrate to Salford from other parts of Manchester – and they will be pleasantly surprised by what they find.”
Back at the Quays, the skies are still slate-grey and the gentle thud of construction works continues apace. I take a look around the Pie Factory, an independent studio and production suite for television and film companies. This is the first working unit to open as part of the sprawling MediaCityUK complex. It feels empty wandering through the echo-filled corridors but it’s an indicator of the kind of new media community that Salford hopes to attract.
Lowry could have captured me on canvas later that afternoon, my body hunched against the wind as I walked past the site entrance to MediaCityUK en route to the tram station for Manchester and its mainline train hub, Piccadilly. Two years from now, Lowry’s matchstick men might well be replaced by BlackBerry-toting TV producers, the terraced houses bulldozed to make way for executive apartments.
About 5,000 people are predicted to move to Salford by 2011, with a further 15,000 over 10 years. But is the town ready for the influx? “There’s more than £3bn of urban regeneration planned for central Salford alone,” says Brady. “With the public sector investment in housing, schools and public transport, we’re confident that Salford is ready to cope.”
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Estate agency
Prestige Property, tel: +44 (0)1617909000; www.prestige4property.com
Development
MediaCityUK, tel: +44 (0)1616603600; www.mediacityuk.co.uk
