Manchester’s booming culture and entertainment sector has proved a notable contributor to this year’s annual Deloitte Manchester Crane Survey, published for the 23rd time today.
The Manchester Crane Survey monitors city centre construction activity across a range of sectors including offices, residential, hotels, retail and education, and is seen as a barometer of developer sentiment and future supply.
Deloitte noted that, while other sectors remained largely resilient, the city’s cultural sector saw the greatest transformation amidst sustained expansion.
Manchester was selected as Best In Travel 2023 by Lonely Planet, and was the only UK destination to appear in National Geographic’s Best of the World 2023. The city currently has 381,000 sq ft of leisure and retail space under construction, including major developments such as Factory International and the Co-op Live Arena.
Notable attractions delivered in 2022 included Mayfield Park, the first new park in the city centre in over 100 years, which has delivered 2.6 hectares of green space to the city centre, including 142 new trees and almost 300,000 plants, supporting the city’s 2038 net zero targets.
Joanne Roney, chief executive officer of Manchester City Council, said: “As a city, we’re incredibly proud of our strong cultural ties, providing a diverse and vibrant destination for people from around the world. The last few years have only worked to solidify this.”
Elsewhere across the city, Deloitte reported solid performance in the office and education construction sectors, while it noted a slight decline in residential construction, the first in seven years, with 2,724 new homes delivered in the previous year.
