IF one company is synonymous with the regeneration of Manchester, it’s the
developer Urban Splash.
“I guess we started there because the city council was keen to work with us,”
says its founder, Tom Bloxham. “And of course, there was a lot of stuff
there that could be developed.”
Even so, Bloxham, 43, whose company is now spreading south, was as surprised
as anyone when Manchester won its super-casino bid last month.
“I was on a train to London with a council member when we got the news — even
he was surprised. But it shows what you can do when you set your mind to it.”
That pretty much sums up Bloxham’s approach, too. Sitting in a borrowed office
at London’s Hayward Gallery, where he is about to join an Arts Council
meeting, Bloxham typifies the new-found confidence of the northwest. Rich,
friendly and fiercely opinionated, he looks like an ageing rocker — biker
boots, rumpled shirt, balding crew-cut, compensatory goatee — and talks like
an extra from Shameless.
But behind the louche style there is a smart business brain and a drive to
succeed that has already amassed him a £50m fortune from property and bar
interests.
Urban Splash, working from its base in Manchester, is one of the best-branded
developers in the regeneration business, pioneering the rebuilding of
Victorian factories into loft-style apartments, and working closely with the
public sector to develop mixed-use communities on abandoned, brownfield
sites.
More recently it has been tackling problem council estates like Park Hill in
Sheffield, and the industrial eyesore that was Fort Dunlop outside
Birmingham. It is also redeveloping the Royal Navy’s goods yards in
Plymouth, and helping to regenerate More-combe, on the northwest coast.
Urban Splash — 70% owned by Bloxham, making £8m profit on £57m turnover last
year — is not short of ambition or style.
But it’s always been a slow labour of love for Bloxham, who doesn’t like joint
ventures unless he calls the shots. He built the firm, via a diversion into
bars, out of a poster-pub-lishing business (Bigger Splash) that he
established at university, and he has no formal training in property. Yet
even with an experienced team around him, he won’t be watered down.
“We’re precious about our brand and if you’re not the paymaster, you have no
control,” he says. “I’d rather do a few things very well, than a lot.”
This year, however, Bloxham wants to launch a listed fund to invest in Urban
Splash’s residential developments, pulling in some of the pension cash
that’s now chasing property. Bloxham says the new fund will be “low risk”,
though whether that’s for him or the investors, others will have to decide.
He is also hoping to push into London. “The people who love our work are the
more style-conscious, and there’s a higher proportion of those in London
than anywhere else,” he says. “But we will only do it if it’s the right
scheme at the right time.”
His real knack, say others, is to pitch his business as part-social enterprise
— making it more than just building yuppy flats, but now helping rehouse the
poor, too. Yet always with an eye to profit.
“People used to ask ‘what are we to do with our city centres?’ ” says Bloxham.
“We have answered that question. Look at the changes in Manchester,
Newcastle, Liverpool and Birmingham. It’s been amazing.
“Our next challenge is the huge deprivation around the city centres — the
council estates and some private estates. Yes, we have to make a profit, but
I see no conflict between that and great architecture and regeneration.”
Bloxham has a boyish verve that makes him a likable figure. As a child, he had
to overcome a debilitating speech impediment, and he seems to have
channelled that same determination into his business.
You can feel it as he enthuses about Fort Dunlop, Urban Splash’s biggest
development yet. The derelict, former tyre factory had long stood as a
symbol of Birmingham’s decline, and had been through various developers’
hands. Nobody could see a solution.
Yet Urban Splash has stripped it out, reglazed it, converted it into 300,000sq
ft of offices, 45,000sq ft of retail space and acres of parking, with a
cobalt-blue Travelodge along the side.
“We did it speculatively,” says Bloxham proudly. “Best part of half a million
square feet of space, no prelets, £40m investment.”
The development opened at Christmas and Bloxham says he now has 40% let or
under offer. Why did he take it on when others blanched?
“Because we worked out land for car parking, which it needed, and we got
Advantage West Midlands to put in money so we could do a rent of £10 per
square foot. And we do special leases, six years long, four pages, no
solicitors, rent and service charges go up a fixed percentage each year, no
reviews.”
He didn’t make any of it residential “because I looked at it and asked ‘would
I want to live there?’ and I thought, ‘no’. I only do residential if I would
want to live there.”
That personal touch and a willingness to leap between residential and
commercial projects makes Bloxham unusual among property hounds, as does his
ability to chivvy the public sector into helping him. Rivals say he is adept
at winkling out grants. “Tom’s a great facilitator,” says one, “and very
persistent in bringing government grants forward.”
That involves some degree of payback. Bloxham’s metallic business card carries
a list of his extra-curricular commitments: member of council, Arts Council;
chair, Arts Council England northwest: chair, Manchester International
Festival. He also has an MBE and is not slow to put himself about on the
business-conference circuit.
“Yeah, I am sure it hasn’t done any harm with our public-sector projects,” he
grins, “but I am passionate about the arts in the northwest. We’ve got
Manchester’s first International Arts Festival this year and Liverpool as
capital of culture next year, so I hope I have made a contribution.”
All the more ironic, then, that he is not Manchester born-and-bred, as many
who meet him think. He was actually brought up in Kingston, just outside
London. He only went north to university.
His Manchester accent stems from those years of speech therapy as a kid. “I
think I subconsciously mimic accents of the people around me,” he says. “It
just happens.”
Bloxham remembers terrible moments at school when he would put his hand up to
answer questions and couldn’t get words out. “They’d get my sister from the
class next door to come and help.”
Did it give him more drive to succeed? “Maybe, and later I got into debating
and drama just to prove I could do it.”
At Manchester University, where he read politics and modern history, he
started selling rock posters to fund his bar bills. When he discovered he
could make more money subletting market space than selling posters, he
became hooked on property.
Now he is fiercely proud of the awards his business has won and the tight team
he has brought with him.
He has started using big-name architects — Will Alsop, Lord Foster — on
projects, and he is set on expanding Urban Splash’s net asset base by a
third each year, aiming for £100m in 2009.
He dreamt that up at a “staff retreat” near his ski lodge in Flaine,
Switzerland, five years ago.
“If you don’t know what your destination is, you will never get there. Now I
have to think where is the next part of the journey.”
Those who have worked with him say his drive is unusual. “He is unbelievably
enthusiastic,” says Alsop, “and he is prepared to take on things other
developers won’t. Though when we have a late meeting, and he suggests going
out for drink, my heart does sink. We always end up in a club with pounding
music and I can’t hear a word anyone says.”
Bloxham’s love of a night out — he makes constant jokes about his drinking —
doesn’t seem to have diminished with age. He founded the Baa Bar chain and
recently sold most of his stake to private equity, but still bar-hops with
regularity.
Much of the Baa Bar money is probably going into his new passion, a “Bubble
House” he has bought on the Cote D’Azur built by the eccentric Finnish
architect Antti Lovag. To some, it looks like a terrible money-pit, but
Bloxham has a habit of seeing things others miss.
“The more you do it, the easier it gets,” he shrugs. “And if I didn’t like
what I do, I just wouldn’t do it.”
With that thought, he’s off to his Arts Council meeting, after telling me not
to give his mobile number to anyone.
TOM BLOXHAM’S WORKING DAY
THE Urban Splash chairman awakes at his canal-side apartment in Castlefield,
Manchester, at 6.30am. “I usually have breakfast with the kids and then walk
to the office by 8.30am,” says Tom Bloxham.
He has 14 directors reporting directly to him in the Urban Splash group. “It’s
a federal system, so the regional managing directors will get to sign off on
things.” But he likes Urban Splash to take the lead role in partnerships.
“If you’re not careful you can become cynical and end up just rebadging. We
don’t do that.”
Bloxham spends two days a week at sites and other offices. He takes a lot of
holidays and “never works weekends”. Most days he stops work at 6pm and
frequently hits the town in Manchester. Panacea and Restaurant Bar &
Grill are among his favourite haunts. He is often out until 2am.
VITAL STATISTICS
Born: December 20, 1963
Marital status: married, with two children
School: Tiffin, Kingston
University: Manchester
First job: porter at Bentalls department store
Salary: £150,000 plus dividends
Homes: Manchester, Flaine and the Côte d’Azur
Car: black 1959 Bentley S3 convertible
Favourite book: L’Etranger, by Albert Camus
Favourite music: Buzzcocks
Favourite film: Casablanca
Favourite gadget: P900 Sony Ericsson phone
Last holiday: skiing in Switzerland
DOWNTIME
MUCH of Tom Bloxham’s time and money are spent working on his new holiday
home, the extraordinary Bubble House designed by architect Antti Lovag, in
the south of France. A series of domes, it looks like something from the set
of Barbarella, and the architect, now retired, lives next door. “When he
proposed it, the client didn’t believe it could be built,” says Bloxham, “so
he built a smaller one for himself in the garden.”
Bloxham’s main hobbies are “drinking, watching Manchester United and going
skiing”. As chairman of the Arts Council North West, he also attends arts
events. “I am fed up with people who complain about things. I think you
should get involved, do something, have an impact. Though when I was first
approached, Arts Council head Gerry Robinson did warn me: ‘People won’t love
you for it and they won’t say thank you’.”
