{"id":361993,"date":"2025-08-21T12:14:27","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T12:14:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/361993\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T12:14:27","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T12:14:27","slug":"how-manchester-became-dubai-of-the-north-theres-money-everywhere-propertys-booming-and-onlyfans-stars-and-influencers-are-fleeing-london-for-it-now-dominic-midgley-reveals-its-secret-and-if","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/361993\/","title":{"rendered":"How Manchester became ‘Dubai of the North’: There’s money everywhere, property’s booming and OnlyFans stars and influencers are fleeing London for it. Now DOMINIC MIDGLEY reveals its secret… and if you should cash in too"},"content":{"rendered":"

I can still remember May 21, 1982, as if it were yesterday. It was the launch date of The Hacienda, the Manchester dance club created by Factory Records, the world\u2019s hippest ever independent label.<\/p>\n

Everyone who was anyone was desperate for membership of an institution that was destined to go down in history as the driving force behind Manchester\u2019s transformation from fading industrial giant to creative powerhouse.<\/p>\n

Somehow my application was accepted and I received my membership card for FAC51, the catalogue number given to the club, in time to make the opening night.<\/p>\n

The paint in the loos was still wet when \u2018Mr Manchester\u2019 Tony Wilson, the Factory founder who somewhat improbably doubled up as presenter of Granada Reports, the local regional TV news show, delivered his rambling welcome speech.<\/p>\n

The celebrity guest Bernard Manning behaved true to type. Grotesquely fat, crude, and, frankly, racist, this Northern comedian \u2013 who had presumably been hired for his shock value \u2013 took one look around, turned to one of the organisers and said: \u2018I\u2019ve played some f***king sh*tholes in my time, but this beats the lot of them.\u2019 With that he walked off stage, handed back his appearance fee and disappeared into the night.<\/p>\n

Despite its thriving music scene, however, Manchester in the early 1980s was the living embodiment of the phrase: \u2018It\u2019s grim up north.\u2019<\/p>\n

For my final two years at university, I lived on a street on the outskirts of a condemned council estate in Hulme, known locally as \u2018The Crescents\u2019 after its series of curved brutalist concrete housing developments.<\/p>\n

By the time I moved in, leaky roofs, poor insulation and an epidemic of drug-dealing \u2013 aided by the provision of so-called \u2018walkways in the sky\u2019 that enabled the local crime lords to easily give the slip to any police officers giving chase \u2013 had driven out most of the tenant families and those habitable flats that remained were rented to students at peppercorn rents.<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The Crescents council estate in Hulme, Manchester, named after its series of curved brutalist concrete housing developments<\/p>\n

\"The <\/p>\n

The estate was demolished in the 1990s and has since given way to a \u00a3400million regeneration of Hulme<\/p>\n

Virtually everyone I knew on the estate, except me, was burgled at least once. Walking home one evening, I was overtaken by a pack of at least ten stray dogs. And in the summer of 1981, residents of my block woke one day to the sight of a dead body on the grass verge opposite.<\/p>\n

Ten years later, the city fathers finally saw sense and The Crescents were demolished. Visiting the area this week was a revelation. One of Britain\u2019s most disastrous experiments in social housing has given way to an attractively landscaped area dotted with the sort of apartment blocks and houses calculated to swell the heart of the most discerning hipster.<\/p>\n

And the \u00a3400million regeneration of Hulme is just one example of a wider renaissance that has transformed England\u2019s second city.<\/p>\n

Figures released by the Office for National Statistics last month showed that productivity, one of the most important economic indicators, has risen steeply in Greater Manchester since 2021, despite flatlining across much of the rest of Britain<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And while the country at large recorded an anaemic growth rate of 0.3 per cent in the last quarter, Manchester is growing at a rate of 2.5 per cent a year.<\/p>\n

A city centre, which accommodated an estimated 300 residents as recently as 40 years ago, now has a population of 100,000 thanks to a development boom which has seen the skyline change out of all recognition, making it resemble a temperate Dubai.<\/p>\n

Between 2018 and 2024, 27 high-rise towers with space for more than 60,000 people were built across Manchester and there are a further 20 under construction, with 51 more at the planning stage.<\/p>\n

Only last month, Salford councillors voted to approve plans for Viadux 2, a \u00a3350million, 895ft residential tower, whose 76 floors will contain 452 apartments and a 160-bed hotel operated by Nobu, a brand part-owned by Robert De Niro.<\/p>\n

\"Manchster's <\/p>\n

Manchster’s city centre, which accommodated an estimated 300 residents as recently as 40 years ago, now has a population of 100,000 thanks to a development boom which has seen the skyline change out of all recognition<\/p>\n

\"Manchester's <\/p>\n

Manchester’s building boom was kick-started by a massive IRA bomb that ripped the heart out of the city in 1996<\/p>\n

Once completed, it will become the tallest building in Greater Manchester and the third tallest in the country, behind the Shard and Horizon 22, which are both in London.<\/a><\/p>\n

The rise of many British city centres is rooted in the redevelopment of areas destroyed by Second World War air raids but, in Manchester\u2019s case, the building boom was kick-started by a massive IRA bomb that ripped the heart out of the city in 1996.<\/p>\n

The explosion, caused by a 3,300lb lorry bomb, was the biggest since the war, and caused colossal damage to hundreds of shops and offices within a half-mile radius but \u2013 thanks to a telephone warning \u2013 no one was killed.<\/p>\n

The devastation sparked a \u00a31.2billion redevelopment of central Manchester and led to that spate of high-rise developments, with the result that there are now no fewer than 34 towers in Manchester that are more than 100 metres high. People have even taken to calling the skyscraper cluster at Deansgate Square \u2018Manc-hattan\u2019.<\/p>\n

One tower that has become a magnet for online influencers thanks to apartments that offer floor-to-ceiling windows with panoramic views across the city is a 47-floor behemoth called \u2018Cortland at Colliers Yard\u2019 \u2013 and so it\u2019s no surprise to find that it\u2019s also home to Jordan Smith, who runs a talent agency called Rebel, with more than 40 content creators on its books<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2018Manchester is a really hot topic,\u2019 says Smith, 31, who moved to Manchester from London after getting disillusioned with the capital during the pandemic lockdowns. \u2018A lot of influencers and celebrities I knew lived in Manchester. So for me, the move was an absolute no-brainer. It would satisfy my city needs, but also help my business as well, as it gave me the ability to network, which is critical to my success.\u2019<\/p>\n

Property prices were also an attraction: \u2018Oh God, yeah, absolutely. You get an apartment for about half the price you would in London. The Cortland is a very premium building, but for a one bed flat you\u2019re looking at \u00a31,800 a month plus bills. And then for the larger deluxe apartments, you\u2019re looking at \u00a33,000 to \u00a35,000,<\/p>\n

\u2018There\u2019s a good positive vibe, too, and it\u2019s got quite a young base, so I found it the perfect place to be in my late twenties and obviously most of my influencers are in their early twenties.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"Zak <\/p>\n

Zak Blackman, who is well on his way to becoming a millionaire through content creation, says he absolutely loves living in Manchester<\/p>\n

\"Tomo <\/p>\n

Tomo first made his name at the age of 17 with a YouTube \u2018reaction channel\u2019 –\u00a0but it was after turning himself into a self-taught music producer that he hit the jackpot<\/p>\n

One of these is Zak Blackman, 22. He began his career as a content creator on the porn-dominated, subscriber-only site OnlyFans, while still serving in the Royal Navy aboard the aircraft carrier HMS Prince Of Wales.<\/p>\n

At the time he was on a salary of around \u00a31,500 a month as a \u2018naval airman\u2019 but earned more than double that by posting raunchy images and videos online for people who liked a man in \u2013 or, rather out of \u2013 uniform.<\/p>\n

Perhaps inevitably, word of his extra-curricular activities leaked out and one day in July 2023 he was ordered back from shore leave and summarily dismissed for bringing the Navy into disrepute after refusing to take down his posts because they were earning him \u2018so much money\u2019.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s when he really started raking it in. \u2018My story made headlines all around the world. And then it just skyrocketed. Just kept going up and up, until it got to about \u00a330k a month or something.\u2019<\/p>\n

Naturally, he bought a flash car \u2013 a sky-blue Porsche Cayman, a model which costs up to \u00a3130,000 new \u2013 and, because he had friends in Manchester, moved north.<\/p>\n

\u2018They were doing so well for themselves,\u2019 he says. \u2018They lived in a tower like this and I just kind of wanted everything they had, like money, nice cars, nice house, everything.<\/p>\n

\u2018At first I moved into a one-bed that was just under 2k a month and then I decided I wanted an upgrade, so I ended up moving to the top floor into a penthouse. That cost about 37k a year so it was very expensive. And that was just the rent \u2013 I had all the bills on top of that.<\/p>\n

\u2018But it was amazing. Some days I\u2019d wake up and be above the clouds. My ears would pop when I took the lift. It was like nothing I\u2019ve ever experienced before. It was the craziest thing ever.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"James <\/p>\n

James Eden left his job as an investment banker in 2008 and took over his family’s clothing business, turning it into\u00a0upmarket men\u2019s fashion brand Private White VC<\/p>\n

\"Dominic <\/p>\n

Dominic Midgley outside the Hacienda apartments, on the site of the famous Hacienda club in Manchester’s city centre<\/p>\n

Not as crazy as some of the kinks that make him money from his OnlyFans posts. In addition to his strip shows and the explicit sex tapes he makes with female co-stars, he has cornered the market in sock fetishism.<\/p>\n

\u2018At the minute, I\u2019m doing a lot of feet-based stuff, a lot of sock stuff,\u2019 he says. \u2018I never realised there was such a big niche in feet. I\u2019ll go around places in the UK and leave my socks. I then post the location online and they\u2019ll be gone in about 30 seconds.\u2019<\/p>\n

He also caters for what he describes as \u2018custom requests\u2019, which can be as innocent as a video of him combing his hair in the morning.<\/p>\n

Perhaps understandably, given that he\u2019s well on the way to becoming a millionaire \u2013 as well as being on track to achieving his ambition of buying a Lamborghini \u2013 Blackman absolutely loves Manchester.<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s like the second capital,\u2019 he says. \u2018I\u2019d say it\u2019s way better than Birmingham. It\u2019s got taller towers, nicer bars, nicer restaurants. I like everything about it really.\u2019<\/p>\n

He adds: \u2018I\u2019ve noticed that so many people \u2013 content creators in particular \u2013 have moved from London to be here. So many people you speak to on the streets these days are not from Manchester. It\u2019s just become the place to be.\u2019<\/p>\n

Indeed, Blackman\u2019s become such a convert to the delights of his adopted city that he\u2019s even dropped his previous allegiance to Watford FC in favour of Manchester United.<\/p>\n

Two miles southwest of the Cortland, in another towering residential block, lives a very different type of content creator – Tomo, 25.<\/p>\n

He first made his name at the age of 17 with a YouTube \u2018reaction channel\u2019 \u2013 a sort of one-man Gogglebox about video games \u2013 but it was after turning himself into a self-taught music producer that he hit the jackpot.<\/p>\n

Last year, he came across an instrumental track by a Ukrainian producer-cum-composer called Frozy that had gone viral. On a whim, at 3 o\u2019clock in the morning and in five minutes flat, he wrote some lyrics, recorded himself singing them and posted the result on TikTok.<\/p>\n

What happened next is like something out of a movie. The American pop star Jason Derulo messaged him out of the blue to request his number, followed up with a call and, within days, Tomo was hanging out in LA.<\/p>\n

There, he and Derulo collaborated with Frozy on a single called From The Islands, which got over 120 million streams and made Billboard\u2019s Top 50 TikTok chart, as well as its Top 50 dance\/electronic chart.<\/p>\n

Unlike Blackman, Tomo is a local \u2013 Oldham-born and educated in Salford. \u2018I feel like Manchester is the number one creative space to be in the UK at the minute,\u2019 he says. \u2018London is obviously very, very creative\u2026 but to get in with people is very, very hard. In Manchester, I feel like you can meet someone on the street and, within two weeks, you could be doing something completely different.\u2019<\/p>\n

Mainstream media is also big up north. The BBC put rocket boosters under this sector in 2011 when it began moving some of its departments from London to Salford\u2019s Media City, a 200-acre TV and tech hub set up on the site of the city\u2019s derelict docks.<\/p>\n

Today, BBC Breakfast, BBC Sport, CBBC, and BBC Radio 5 Live are all based in Media City, a relocation drive that has created an estimated 4,600 new jobs.<\/p>\n

Manchester\u2019s buoyant economy and the success of its two Premier League football teams are attracting big names in hospitality, too. Soho House will open its first club outside the south of England across five floors of the former Granada Studios later this year.<\/a> Gordon Ramsay and Richard Caring both launched restaurants in Manchester in 2023. And the hotel sector is flourishing.<\/p>\n

Many credit the city\u2019s go-ahead Labour mayor Andy \u2018King of the North\u2019 Burnham for creating the conditions for business to prosper. Apart from championing the high-rise revolution, he improved transport links by taking the bus network back into public ownership and last month announced plans for a new underground system for trains and trams.<\/p>\n

He has also become something of a style icon thanks to his preference for bomber jackets rather than suits. At least three of them come from a local luxury menswear firm, which is run by James Eden, 42, a former investment banker with RBS in the City of London.<\/p>\n

Until the credit crunch hit in 2008, Eden had enjoyed a lucrative but, ultimately, unfulfilling career in the Square Mile and the financial crisis persuaded him to switch careers. As he says: \u2018My reality cheque had bounced.\u2019<\/p>\n

Fortunately, his decision to apply for voluntary redundancy coincided with the emergence of a business opportunity in the city in which he\u2019d been brought up, in the shape of his family\u2019s clothing manufacturing business.<\/p>\n

It had been acquired by his great-great grandfather Jack White, who had started out as a trainee pattern-cutter after returning from the Great War with a Victoria Cross, in the inter-war years.<\/p>\n

But, by the time it came to Eden\u2019s attention, it had lost one of its biggest clients, Burberry, and its future looked uncertain.<\/p>\n

His inspired solution was to transform it into an upmarket men\u2019s fashion brand in its own right and he didn\u2019t have far to look far for a suitably swashbuckling name for his new venture: Private White VC.<\/p>\n

His great grandfather\u2019s medal-winning exploits had been immortalised in a 1987 edition of Victor, the weekly boy\u2019s adventure comic devoted to tales of wartime derring-do.<\/p>\n

It revealed how Private White had saved a boatload of men by towing them to safety using a length of copper telephone wire while under fire from German troops.<\/p>\n

To this day, Grandpa Jack\u2019s exploits are immortalised in the copper zips and rivets that adorn the company\u2019s garments, while many jackets are lined in the colours of his regimental blanket.<\/p>\n

Private White VC\u2019s commitment to time-honoured practices of marking up cloth with chalk and hand-cutting patterns with shears in a factory that dates back to 1853 have attracted a legion of celebrity customers, including former Manchester United great David Beckham, Coldplay\u2019s Chris Martin, and actors Eddie Redmayne, Pierce Brosnan, Henry Cavill and Tom Hardy.<\/p>\n

Eden says the company now has a turnover of \u00a310million and is growing at an extremely healthy rate of 25 per cent a year.<\/p>\n

And he has seen similar progress in the city at large during the 15 years since he returned to his hometown.<\/p>\n

\u2018We\u2019ve got some phenomenal world-class restaurant bars and hotels now, which we never used to have. So the food scene is incredible. The art scene is incredible. The culture scene is incredible.<\/p>\n

\u2018There\u2019s also an incredible amount of retail, residential development. You\u2019ve got skyscrapers, you\u2019ve got prefab apartments, you\u2019ve got, I think, the biggest student capital population in Europe, and that\u2019s booming and bustling. So there is a real dynamism here.\u2019<\/p>\n

Sadly, the Hacienda is not part of this urban revival. A club that played host to the likes of Madonna, The Smiths, Oasis and The Stone Roses during its glory days closed in 1997, brought low by a combination of financial losses, gun crime and drug issues. Today, a residential block stands on the site it once occupied named, perhaps inevitably, Hacienda Apartments.<\/p>\n

The second and only other time I saw Tony Wilson was when I sat opposite him at the wedding reception of a mutual friend in Berlin in 2003. A few years later, he contracted liver cancer and died of a heart attack in early 2007 at the age of 57. Poignantly, his coffin was given the catalogue number FAC501.<\/p>\n

But Wilson\u2019s dream of a revitalised Manchester did not die with him. The revival he kick-started all those years ago has transformed the city\u2019s fortunes. It\u2019s no longer grim up north. Indeed, it\u2019s rather jolly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I can still remember May 21, 1982, as if it were yesterday. It was the launch date of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8813],"tags":[748,92,393,4884,257,2791,2465,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-361993","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manchester","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-dailymail","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-london","13":"tag-mailplus","14":"tag-manchester","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115066705498441263","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}