Whittaker: Peel Waters ready to invest and start another 30-year vision

Peel Waters managing director James Whittaker is undaunted by what he describes as an “endless” pipeline of waterside regeneration projects and is adamant the company will see them through.

Place North West caught up with Whittaker at the Embassy Village groundbreaking ceremony, where he spoke to representatives from the more than 50 businesses who contributed to what will be the final cog of Peel’s Manchester Waters project – a 40-room village and community for rough-sleepers.

With MediaCity recently checked off – the developer sold its remaining 25% stake to Landsec earlier this month – Whittaker said Peel is looking forward, not back.

“We are ready to invest in the next project,” he said.

MediaCity

In November when Peel exited MediaCity, pocketing £83m, it seemed like the end of an era.

Peel Waters first ventured into Salford Quays in 2007 with an application and a £650m investment – a figure that Whittaker now considers to be one of his “biggest commitments” – just before hitting the choppy financial waters of 2008.

Whittaker recounted the industry’s monetary challenges during the recession but praised the persistence of the banks and investors who kept with Peel during the crunch.

He said: “Everyone was withdrawing from a lot of projects, but they believed in us, and they stuck with us, and we saw it through.”

The success of MediaCity cannot be understated, as one of Greater Manchester’s pioneering waterside regeneration projects, the intention was always to develop a scheme with “scale, mass, and a vision of creating a city”, Whittaker said.

The Manchester Waters scheme will build on Peel’s success in the area with MediaCity. Credit: via Peel Waters

When discussions with the BBC about moving north began to gain momentum, Whittaker said the broadcaster was drawn to the idea of “businesses collaborating together, from the SMEs to large business to studio spaces”. Providing homes for relocating media professionals in the same area made the proposition even more enticing.

This mixed-use model with a central economic draw would go on to be replicated across the North West.

Whittaker, commenting on reaching the end of the MediaCity development’s cycle by offloading Peel’s final stake, said: “We are really proud to have created a whole regeneration project around Salford Quays, and now we are ready to invest in the next project.

“We still have investments around MediaCity, we still want to regenerate and invest, especially in Trafford Wharfside – with the masterplan around Old Trafford, we are heavily involved in that.”

Trafford Wharfside’s masterplan aims to enable the delivery of up to 5,000 homes on 215 acres between the Manchester Ship Canal, Old Trafford stadium, and Europa Way.

He added: “This is the start of another 30 to 40-year vision.”

Liverpool

Last week, Whittaker paid a visit to Liverpool’s Bramley-Moore Dock and Everton’s £500m stadium. He said: “We’re only a month away from completion of that, so I can’t wait.

“It was amazing to see, it’s a brilliant stadium.”

Whittaker hopes the Bramley-Moore Dock development will “bookend” Peel’s projects across Merseyside and “create an anchor for the city”.

Everton’s stadium is expected to be ready in the coming months. Credit: Peel Waters / If We Ran The Zoo

South of Bramley-Moore Dock, 150 acres between Princes Dock and Northern Dock is being developed by Peel as part of its £5bn Liverpool Waters masterplan.

When pressed on Peel and Liverpool’s speed of delivery, Whittaker defended the company: “In terms of speed, [our motto is] determination, patience, and perseverance.

“The reason why you have to have patience is because of the politics involved in delivering development…and the planning process.

“[And now] the process of getting through build regulations, which takes another nine months.”

He continued: “We’ve actually delivered 1,000 homes already in the last three years. Princes Dock, no one talks about that, they just talk about – ‘where’s the next one.'”

Whittaker was also keen to point out that chancellor Rachel Reeves had announced that Central Docks would get £55m funding from Homes England to unlock the delivery of 2,350 homes at Central Docks, part of the Liverpool masterplan.

Whittaker said progress at Central Docks would be similar to that of MediaCity, but likely in a more phased, longer-term approach.

Central Docks will host a 4.7-acre park called Central Park. Credit: Peel Waters

“We don’t have that £650m now to invest, whereas back in 2008 we did because we had sold half of the Peel Ports businesses, which gave us the money to deliver it.”

Commenting proudly on Peel’s Liverpool progress, Whittaker said: “We’ve done a thousand homes, we’ve got the Isle of Man Steam Packet, the link bridge, and we’ve done the cruise landing terminal.”

Peel completed the £71m ferry terminal which will serve travellers to and from the Isle of Man in June this year.

Whittaker finished: “It’s a phased development plan, it always will be, you don’t want to rush the market because you’ll build too many homes.

“We’ve always said from day one, this is a 30-year vision, so you’ve got to work in the 30 years, not the first three.”

What’s to come for Peel?

Over the next five years, Whittaker expects many of Peel’s projects to reach completion, particularly the Trafford City Manchester Docks project, which would extend to Embassy Village.

When asked what he felt was Peel’s most ambitious project, he said: “In terms of biggest scale, I would say Trafford City.”

Trafford City will host the £250m Therme spa-leisure development, the £75m Wavegarden centre, an ice arena, and a £2.5m Padel club.

Trafford City’s Therme will be a key attraction for Manchester’s visitor economy. Credit: via Rule 5

Of the Trafford City project, Whittaker said: “We’ve half done it, and we’ve got half to finish – we’re on that journey.”

Whittaker sees the role of “play” as a crucial draw for a region’s development. He compared the Therme project to its sister site in Bucharest, which sees more than 1.6m customers come through its doors annually – a third of whom are tourists.

He continued: “What a project like that does for us as an economy and the tourism industry is massive.

“The effects on hotels, retail, and restaurants – it’s huge.”

Manchester’s Therme spa will be “the first of its kind in the UK” and will be double the size of Bucharest’s Therme.

Whittaker expects Therme alone to welcome more than 2m customers a year in total, suggesting: “If you work on the same pro-rata, then you’d have around 700,000 new tourists coming to Manchester each year.”

A recent report from Centre for Cities on visitor spending in UK cities highlights that the area around Trafford Centre and Old Trafford Stadium sees up to 14% of the distribution of visitor spending across Manchester’s neighbourhoods, equivalent only to that of the inner-city centre, based off 2023 data.

The report indicates that there is a “gravitational” pull of visitors towards tourist hotspots and therefore any city should expect revenues in these areas to be “disproportionately” high, and take advantage of that fact.

Whittaker is keen to take full advantage of this data. Alongside large-scale leisure developments lies the potential for “high-end lifestyle hotels” to “uplift the bedroom offer in the city”, he said.

Of Trafford City’s development potential, he said: “The list is endless – but we are going to see it through in the next five years.”