Why are companies leaving MediaCity?

On a “filthy day” in 1981, Felicity Goodey stood at the edge of Salford Docks and watched, in her words, the water “bubble with all sorts of noxious substances”. To anyone looking out at the abandoned docks, the idea that anyone might want to build anything here was bordering on insanity.

The architect Peter Hunter disagreed. “Look at the sky, look at the water,” he told Felicity. “This could be the most wonderful waterside development.” 

Hunter had a dream; not a humble dream. Where most saw an abandoned dockside wasteland, all abandoned warehouses and grimy waters, he saw the future, the sort of community most developers now strive to capture in their CGI renders; 30-somethings with media jobs and rictus grins strolling along by the water’s edge, outdoor swimmers, weekend paddleboarding, little rows of cafés and bars and people enjoying pints in the sun. 

Hunter’s optimism for Salford Docks could occasionally appear delusional, even to his own colleagues. Steven Pidwill, one of those colleagues, remembers the water in the docks was so polluted it would occasionally catch fire. “Most people thought the scheme was a hopeless, wild idea,” he told Place North West. It took the best part of three decades to get there (Salford City Council agreed to take on over two hundred acres of land and water for £30 million from the Manchester Shipping Canal Company in 1981, appointing Hunter to draw up a masterplan), and after years of dedicated effort, MediaCity was born from the fruits of those labours — home to five major BBC departments, ITV, small independent production companies, the Imperial War Museum North, the Lowry Centre and a cocktail bar that looks a bit like a spaceship where you can get drinks that for some reason come served in Bunsen burners.

 And so, when I catch up with a production executive working in Media City over the phone, I’m a little surprised to hear the following: “I think it’s failed. They never got the critical mass of companies and vibe — bars, restaurants.” 

She’s referring specifically to the dream the founders of MediaCity had to create a thriving cluster of big and small companies. And her view is more common than you might think. While the area is doing just fine in terms of bigger companies, the trend in terms of smaller ones is concerning. In the past few years several indie businesses have left MediaCity: production companies Red Production and Studio Lambert moving to the city centre, small hospitality businesses like The Botanist, Unagi and Grindsmith either closing or abandoning the area altogether.

It’s worth celebrating that these smaller production companies chose to remain in Manchester, rather than waving goodbye to the North and moving to London. But the sudden departure of several creative businesses, coupled with Channel 4 opting to have a Northern base in Leeds rather than Media City, and the BBC leaving its enormous Bridge House offices and slashing its workforce in the children and education departments as recently as last Friday, is contributing to a fear that the area is becoming too corporate.

The fear in MediaCity is that the area will eventually no longer feel like a creative space – meaning the talented students at the University of Salford who might wish to stay have to leave for somewhere that feels more thriving. According to ONS UK Business Count data, the number of businesses in MediaCity boomed between 2016 and 2021, more than doubling in this time. But in the following three years, that number fell back. While the number of large businesses employing over 250 people has continued to grow, there’s been a 10% drop in the number of smaller businesses who employ fewer than 10 people. This is a problem, according to a property developer who argues that while bigger tenants will give you longer covenants and more financial security, “you want small tenants because that adds the variety and richness and intrigue”.

The decline in smaller, independent companies is one thing, and clearly a concern, but what about that other thing my production executive source mentioned – the vibe? The early days of MediaCity, according to my source, weren’t as buzzy as the glossy promotional videos promised. “It was just a ghost town with building work going on,” she says. Despite her hopes that one day a dam would break and trendy indie cafés and wine bars would spring up along the waterside, very little changed. “It took them three years to give us a Pret.” 

In 2004, the BBC’s director general Mark Thompson announced a major relocation of BBC departments up North, a move that would save the broadcaster an annual £320 million within three years and help it connect with Northern audiences. In a speech at the Royal Society of Arts in 2006, Thompson said the BBC’s approval ratings in the North – measured by whether viewers felt the BBC was relevant to them, understood their needs and reflected their issues — was “lower than it should be and lower than it is in most of the rest of the UK”. When the Salford Urban Regeneration Company were asked to bid for the BBC, they made four short films about their dream for Salford Quays and posted the DVD to the BBC.

The promotional videos focus heavily on how MediaCity could appeal to Salford natives and people who have lived in Greater Manchester for generations. “This is where I’ll want to live and work,” Dylan, a Salford schoolboy, told the camera. “Everything will be here. Homes, lifestyle, culture. The coolest people from around the world coming here. The newest stuff coming out. I think that’s what’ll make it so unique. A city of technology and talent — and it’s only down the road from my nan’s.”

But the videos also appealed to the need to create an area in Salford that felt genuinely buzzy: filled with hip and happening people, pavement cafés where creative types can sit and share gossip, bars that fill up in the evenings and apartment blocks replete with professionals. The sense you get from watching the videos is that the founders wanted Salford Quays to be a destination, not somewhere you commute for your nine to five.

It seems apparent that this sense of destination has never really materialised. There’s a cultural myth that I’ve found hard to stand up but seems so well-known that according to The Guardian, once an artist produced posters of two women outside the Metropolitan pub saying “Oh no! Surely not another media whore moving to Didsbury!” The story goes that when the BBC relocated 1,800 roles to Salford Quays, many of these workers gravitated towards Chorlton and Didsbury. “While they’re here for a nine to five, they’re going home in the evening to south Manchester,” says Jonathan Moore, a councillor for Salford Quays and the chair of the Salford Quays Community Forum. “They’re not really embedded in the Quays.”

This failure to create a MediaCity community, as it were, has undermined the whole purpose of the so-called “cluster model”. The benefit of that model was supposed to be that concentrating lots of media and creative companies in the same place would prompt collaboration and allow talented people and ideas to mix (similar areas sprung up in Dubai, Jordan, Egypt, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Shanghai, Seoul and Zaragoza in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century). But if those same talented people are scuttling back to Chorlton — with its promised restaurants that aren’t called Wagamama or Bella Italia — when the clock strikes five, the concept is undermined. Lower footfall in the evenings and on the weekends provides one explanation as to why small indie businesses may not feel inclined to move into MediaCity.

The cluster model has its critics though. Some say it inevitably creates “a bit of an echo chamber”, particularly for media executives whose ideas and contacts rely on being able to speak to a diverse range of sources. “If you’re a journalist, you probably want to be in the city centre,” says a former journalist who now works in TV in MediaCity. “You probably want to go somewhere like the Freemount where you can meet anyone from any walk of life, rather than staying and being around more people who work for the BBC or ITV.”

There is another, perhaps simpler, reason why MediaCity might be struggling to attract indies too: it’s very expensive. A property insider suggests that given how new all the buildings are, MediaCity is probably still in the period of paying off the costs of building everything. Developers in new build schemes often have to charge higher rents, given they have both running costs and capital costs to pay, meaning foodie and creative entrepreneurs wanting to do something risky are often priced out (see the current selection of restaurant options at MediaCity: Wagamama, Nando's, Harvester, Prezzo and so on). Landlords leasing out beautiful old Victorian buildings in the Northern Quarter have long paid off their capital costs, meaning they only have running costs to contend with and don’t need to charge their tenants too much. In this sense, the Northern Quarter, with its mix of trendy independent cafés and bookshops, is fairly unique.

All of that said, those running the show are adamant the picture is rosy. In November, LandSec, a London-based property developer, bought Peel’s last remaining stake in MediaCity for £83 million. They’re promising 3,200 more homes and 800,000 sq ft of commercial space. And Martin Chown, interim managing director of MediaCity, says the area is at 93% occupancy and that it has a “strong pipeline of interest” from “a range of cutting-edge businesses”. Chown adds that MediaCity has welcomed two independent coffee shops recently — Blanconero and Moose. Both of these trendier additions are “trading well”. And a LandSec spokesperson reminded me that in a few weeks, Kargo will be back — the hive of independent food traders that descends on the green space outside the Dock House every spring until late summer, which is often heaving with diners and DJs playing music.

A property insider with knowledge of LandSec says the company is focussed on “making their assets make them money” and wouldn’t take on the risk of owning MediaCity unless they thought they could pull businesses in and build on its success. “They are absolute titans,” a real estate developer adds. 

It’s easy to see some links between the original vision for MediaCity and what transpired. Darryl Morris, a longtime Mill collaborator and regular broadcaster on Times Radio, had one of his first jobs in MediaCity, working as a broadcast assistant for the BBC World Service, “which gave a working class lad from Bolton the opportunity to produce huge radio shows on one of the most iconic radio stations on earth”. “I could see it happening before my eyes,” he says. “People from parts of the country that media jobs like this would never have reached.” In 2020, The Guardian reported that some Mancunians had noticed an improvement in the BBC’s coverage since it moved up North. “I like how if they interview shoppers they are often in Manchester now, rather than in London,” said John Axon, owner of a cheese deli in Didsbury.

What is less easy to see is the founders original desire for the area to be a truly creative space that mixed the independents with the big corporations. Sure, to those who remember the grotty wasteland of the '80s, with those noxious substances bubbling around in the water, the transformation of the area must feel like a minor miracle. But to many actually working, or living, at MediaCity now, something is missing. “The whole time I’ve been there, it’s never been bustling,” says a BBC runner and production assistant. “Maybe I was just expecting something different.”