bryan gray face to face
to football, one area that has developed quietly has been a reputation as a high quality centre for the media. According to some of the latest surveys (NWDA, MIDAS), around 320,000 people are already employed in the creative and digital sectors, generating 16% of the region’s output, students at 18 universities within one hour’s drive of Manchester can choose from nearly 300 media-related courses, with around 15,000 opting so to do However, this will almost fade into insignificance as the latest development – MediaCityUK – comes on stream. This is a £500 million private sector investment which will transform this part of Manchester into a truly world standard centre for all aspect of the creative and digital sectors. The development is being led by Peel Media, a division of the Peel Group, under its chairman, Brian Gray. Brian was formerly the chairman of the Northwest Development Agency and is ProChancellor of Lancaster University. He has also been chairman of the Baxi Group and worked for many years in senior management with ICI. He took up his present position at Peel Media in December 2009.
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PM-Select: How did you become involved in this project? Bryan Gray: While I was chairman of the NWDA, we became aware that the BBC was looking to move a number of its departments out of London in order to become more transparent to its audience, to be able to adopt new ways of working and to concentrate more upon content and creativity rather than technology. The Peel Group, together with Salford City Council and a number of other partners, looked around the world at what were referred to as ‘media cities’ and decided that Salford could offer an ideal solution. John Whittaker, the Group chairman, came from a family that had invested in a wide range of industries in the northwest since the 1850s and had taken the opportunity to buy up a large quantity of derelict buildings and land in Salford, along the edge of the Manchester Ship Canal, itself already owned by the Peel Group. The Group then formed Peel Media as the prime body to develop the site and with its partners – the Northwest Regional Development Agency, Salford City Council, Central Salford Urban Regeneration Company and Northwest Vision+Media, became one of the bidders to the BBC. On 31st May 2007, the BBC confirmed that it would be moving five of its departments to Salford, including BBC
hile the City of Manchester has developed over the years a reputation for many things, ranging from good quality food
Children’s, BBC Children’s Learning, BBC Sport, BBC Radio Five Live and parts of its Future Media and Technology. This agreement then underpinned the development. About 800 staff from the BBC’s Manchester offices will join them. PM-Select: So what exactly is MediaCityUK? Bryan Gray: MediaCityUK is a purpose- built community for the creative and digital industries located at the Manchester Ship Canal waterfront here at Salford Quays. Thanks to the forward thinking of our Group chairman, we have 200 acres of land that had been cleared of buildings and offered an immediately available brownfield site. The aim, as the title indicates, is not to create yet another campus or business park but, instead to create a vibrant new city, complete with all of the facilities that you would normally associate with that. So, in addition to the main technical buildings, there will be a major frontline hotel, cafes, bars restaurants, shops, an outside piazza capable of holding 5,000 people, supermarket and medical facilities. PM-Select: This is a major development. Are you doing it in several phases? Bryan Gray: We have planned this to be done in several phases. Phase I, which began construction in summer 2007 through the management contractors, Bovis Lend Lease, is due to be completed in 2011. This will involve more than 36 acres out of a total of 200 acres. This phase will include: • 65,032m2
five buildings; • A studio block of 23,225m2 • 7,432m2
of office space spread across ;
of retail/leisure space;
• 378 apartments in two tower blocks; • A 218 bed Holiday Inn; • 5-acre open piazza capable of holding 5,000 people; • Tram terminus linking the City to Manchester city centre; • Footbridge across the Manchester Ship • Canal linking to the Imperial War Museum North and the Lowry Arts Centre on Trafford Wharf; • 2,200 space multi-storey car park. PM-Select: How are all these facilities being utilised? Bryan Gray: The BBC will be moving around 2,500 staff to MediaCityUK from 2011. The University of Salford is creating a new higher education campus here, designed to accommodate around 700 students and staff. This will be an extension of their main campus and will act both as a showcase for cutting edge projects and exhibitions and as a hub for research and teaching. Northwest Vision+Media, which is the northwest’s organisation for leading, promoting and supporting the region’s creative and digital industries, relocated to a refurbished building in the autumn of last
Bryan Gray, chairman of Peel Media.
year, enabling it to establish a presence here ahead of the completion of Phase I. Finally, we have an interesting old building – The Pie Factory – which was originally a frozen food factory which we have converted to accommodate three sound stages ranging from 3,000-6,800ft2 and a choice of office accommodation, costume department, make-up rooms, dressing rooms and green rooms, all with 24/7 security and parking. Already more than 25 businesses are located there, including radio production, PR/marketing and advertising agencies. The Studio Block, together with the
MediaCityUK is a purpose-built community for the creative and digital
industries...the aim, as the title indicates, is not to create yet another campus or business park but, instead, to create a vibrant new city, complete with all of the facilities that you would normally associate with that. So, in addition to the main technical buildings, there will be a major frontline hotel, cafes, bars, restaurants, shops, an outside piazza capable of holding 5,000 people, supermarket and medical facilities.
facilities in the Technical Block, is designed to be available on a hire basis from January 2011. There are seven High Definition television studios and two audio studios, one of which is dedicated to the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. In the Studio Block there is also the Open Centre, which is a split-level reception area with bar, cafés and an information point. The technical block features fully equipped sound and vision control rooms, core post facilities, a central technical area, dressing rooms, make-up rooms, workshops, set storage and green rooms. The BBC received the key to the first of its three buildings on 14 October 2009 – this was Building C, the biggest of the three and home to Radio 5 live, BBC Sport and local and regional news. I am pleased to say that we handed this over ahead of schedule and work is now in hand to fit it out ready for full occupation next year. PM-Select: With all of these facilities being created here, what is happening about communications technology? Bryan Gray: All of MediaCityUK’s tenants, including the BBC, The University of Salford and Northwest Vision+Media, will be able to benefit from a high capacity, high bandwidth resilient network, designed specifically to meet the needs of the media industry. The new network has the potential to deliver speeds of up to 10 Gigabits, making the digital hub as connected as media clusters in cities like Dubai and Singapore. BT Business will design, implement and manage the private network based on optical fibre and Cisco technologies. It will comprise more than 20 million metres of optical fibre cable carrying voice, data, high and standard definition video and wireless communications services. With some of the UK’s fastest data and
file transfer speeds, the powerful communications network will support online users enabling them to use multiple bandwidth-hungry applications and broadcast media transmission, both on and off the site. The network will enable high definition video to be transferred seamlessly across the site along with high quality business Internet Protocol (IP) telephony, file sharing,
www.pm-select.co.uk l july/august 2010 l Property Management Select l 7
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