And this is the result; this is a computer-generated image of the first phase of Media City, now almost complete. This is what we were proposing. Instead of just building a new home for the BBC, as our rivals were proposing, we would take the BBC as an opportunity and use that as a catalyst to unlock a globally significant media city. From port to portal. The old port of Manchester, Salford Quays, now transformed into a new ‘portal,’ a globally significant media city. This is the first phase, 37 acres of it. The whole site is 200 acres and we are fortunate that it is all the ownership of Peel Holdings, a very interesting company. Peel Holdings are one of our biggest developers in the North West. The Chairman of Peel Holdings John Whittaker began to build up his multi-billion pound empire by buying the disused ship canal back in the 70s. When the Port of Manchester closed the ship canal was so polluted that everybody else thought of it as a complete nightmare, because despite the pollution it had to be kept open by Act of Parliament since it now forms Cheshire’s main drain. So it has to be kept dredged, very expensive. Nobody wanted it, but John did. He saw something nobody else saw. To him it was not just the waterway, which might be brought back to life sometime; he also saw a land bank, he saw a land bank 37 miles long, between the two major cities of the North West, Manchester and Liverpool. This was the foundation of his empire and he went on to buy the Port of Liverpool and much more besides. He is a visionary and I flew Mike Joroff across from the States and together we made a private presentation to John Whittaker and asked whether he would support this vision of bidding for the BBC in order to unlock a globally significant media city. I suspect many developers would have told us it was far too risky, far too aspirational; but not John. He saw the potential and took a big risk because in order to unlock it he would have to build, among other things, a set of state of the art studios, a very expensive exercise, but he knew that to win the BBC studios were a deal-breaker. Peel’s brilliant construction director David Glover gave us his solemn undertaking that Phase I would look like the original computer-generated image, and it does.
Executive designate, Barbara Spicer, hadn’t even taken up post when I hauled her out of her previous local authority and asked her to join us. We were several years behind in this competition so between us we had to plan a whole new city all in a few short months.
This is what we had to deliver and to a very draconian time scale. Thanks to the teams at Peel, their constructors, Bovis Lendleese, Salford City Council and the URC, Mediacity UK is on budget and a month ahead of schedule.
These are the Departments of the BBC that are coming up to Salford.
Many people said the BBC will never come but as we started bringing staff up for familiarisation tours minds changed. Other departments, not involved in the move, are now demanding to come too. The Manchester based BBC Philharmonic Orchestra is also relocating to their own custom-built, state of the art, recording studio, and are so excited that they will no longer have to play, as it were, second fiddle to the Halle.
There is everything here in phase 1 that you would find in a city, offices, houses and apartments, hotels, crèches, shops and supermarkets. And a tram right to the doorstep of the BBC! They are nothing if not demanding! The URC lead the bid team drawn from of Peel and Salford, with Peel’s Chairman, John Whittaker and Salford’s leader, John Merry on the end of a phone permanently accessible to us. Salford’s new Chief
50 Felicity Goodey CBE
Phase 1 will be open for business from January 2011. It has to otherwise Peel will get no rent! For the first time the BBC are renting absolutely everything, including studios. It will be a great public destination. When it’s complete, the BBC is likely to form only a tenth of the population, estimated at 15,000 to 20,000. This is the first phase of a globally significant media
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