It’s the dogs that give it away. Even though Manchester city centre is just a two-minute walk the other side of the Northern Quarter, by the time you get to Ancoats you are in a place that people call home; a vibrant residential community where dog walkers chat and the mood feels light.
One of the key players in making this happen was Northern Group, which began life as a residential developer in Ancoats. And what it has done for the spirits of this once-neglected industrial district it now plans to do for the office market right across Manchester, with an offering designed to make work more collaborative and more fun.
Northern Group made the headlines this year with three notable office acquisitions totalling more than 165,000 sq ft: 19 Spring Gardens and 76 King Street, both in the middle of Manchester city centre (see Northern Group buys Manchester’s DKNY building), as well as the Siemens Building in leafy Didsbury (see Northern Group bags flagship Siemens building), which will be familiar to anyone who has travelled into Manchester via the motorways to the south.
From the outside this probably led to a bit of head scratching but, as Northern Group chief operating officer Paul Dobbs explains, it is entirely in keeping with the principles on which the company was founded: that owning and retaining buildings means more profit with which to fund future growth.
Retain and reinvest
Reflecting on the company’s first big Ancoats resi developments – Flint Glass Wharf in 2010 and Ice Plant in 2012 – Dobbs says: “It was a bit strange back in the day because build-to-rent didn’t exist then, so a lot of people didn’t understand it, but we were one of the first to start that.
“As there was a bit of a downturn in the market, we thought we might as well retain those profits and reinvest. We had steady growth from the beginning which is why now we are beginning to become a bit more prominent in the market, because as we built that portfolio we can reinvest more, we can purchase properties of a greater value.”
If Northern Group was doing BTR before anyone called it that, it was also about to move into the world of flex before that term had been coined.
In 2016, Northern Group developed its first commercial building, Jactin House in Ancoats, which was part new-build and part refurbishment of a heritage building. Northern Group took part of the ground floor for its headquarters, but a brainwave hit when wondering what to do with the rest of the space.
“We were getting a lot of enquiries around one- or two-person desk spaces,” says Dobbs. “We have always had this area as our office but we had another ground-floor space and we thought, ‘Let’s try flexible workspace on the ground floor’ – co-working as it was the time. And it took off from there.”
The flex space proved popular and in 2017 the concept was launched under its own brand, Colony. “That’s where Colony was born,” says Dobbs. “From that one- or two-person co-working arrangement, which has now grown into seven sites, soon to be nine sites, and it’s all fitted, furnished, community-led, roof terraces, yoga, brunch is on a Thursday. It has moved on somewhat from four white walls.”
The Colony space at Jactin House is sleek and stylish and the look is the brainchild of Aaron Ezair, who runs Colony alongside Northern Group founder Nathan Ezair. “Aaron takes a lead on it,” says Dobbs. “It’s very design-led and that’s what generates the interest; people want to work in a space that they can collaborate in and enjoy.”
Dobbs believes flex has a huge role to play in bringing workers back to the office, providing a model that offers genuine buzz and a sense of collaboration, even with different companies that may happen to be based in the same room.
“They see the value in that, but they also see the value in the fact that they can flex up and down, so where their business is booming and they need an extra 10 desk spaces, we can offer it very, very quickly,” he says.
Ear to the ground
Which brings us back to those three big office acquisitions made earlier this year. They are all, at least partially, going to provide homes for more Colony space and their purchase was timed to coincide with the team at Northern Group growing big enough to carry out the work required itself.
“We are quite meticulous in what we do,” says Dobbs. “We don’t just bring in a main contractor and say ‘Right, leave you to it – there you go’. We’re involved in every detail. Our fit-out now we do ourselves with our own team, so there is only so fast we can grow when we work like that. But as the team grows we can grow bigger. Our fit-out team has seven or eight people now so it means we can take on more work.”
At the largely vacant Spring Gardens building, the fifth floor has already been stripped out and is ready for fit-out. But at King Street, also known as the DKNY Building, another flex operator, Orega, already occupies the upper floors, meaning the owner faces the unusual situation of housing two competing flex providers, one of which owns the building. Can that work?
“We’ll see how the relationship goes,” says Dobbs. “That flex space operator is new to us, so we don’t know how they work, we don’t know how they operate, so we’re learning from them as well to see what works. No real decisions have been made.”
The company has time to decide on its ultimate plans for the Siemens Building, as Siemens will remain in place for at least another two years, but a southern outpost for Colony definitely seems on the cards.
Dobbs says: “We are looking at putting some kind of flex offering in there, that is part of the plans, but it is all subject to planning and subject to whichever other operators we bring into that site, what their needs are and how that works for them. But because we are quite hands on, we’ve got our ear to the ground, we can flex ourselves with that site. We might have 50,000 sq ft flex space, we might have 20,000 sq ft, depending on what the needs of the other operators for the site will be.”
After three major deals it may seem as though Northern Group’s time on the acquisition trail is due a bit of a breather, but Dobbs denies this is the case. “No, definitely not,” he says. “We are still acquiring, so where the opportunity is right for us and is in keeping with our growth plans, we still want to be in the market for new acquisitions.”
However, the company plans to stay local. “We’re Manchester born and bred and the way we can manage and develop and refurbish and constantly look at the ever-changing needs, we want to be close at hand and be able to do that without having to travel too far, and all our contractors are based here and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, city centre or in and around the M60 – as long as the opportunity is right.”
Upward trajectory
Even a cursory scan of the Manchester skyline reveals it is a city currently awash with new development and Dobbs puts the city’s ongoing success down to a collective sense of community and drive, coupled with a proactive council committed to growth, something he believes rival cities are only beginning to latch onto.
“The other northern cities, they have seen that it can work and they are now following through with that, but Manchester is now moving at pace whereas the other northern cities are probably 10, 15 years behind that upward trajectory,” he says.
Northern Group is a company whose principles – of owning the space in which it operates – feel very old and yet its flex offering could not feel more modern. In a way, it is the perfect example of Manchester’s ability to marry its industrial past with the present.
Images © Northern Group
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