Inside NOMA: Manchester's 20-Year Regeneration Megaproject

Walk north from Manchester city centre past the Printworks and you'll hit NOMA — one of the largest and longest-running regeneration projects in the UK outside London. Since work began in the early 2010s, the 20-acre site has been steadily transformed from a patchwork of underused land around the former Co-operative Group headquarters into a genuinely mixed-use district of offices, homes, hotels, public space and retail. It's a useful case study in what a long-horizon regeneration scheme actually looks like on the ground, and what it means for the contractors and tradespeople working on it.

What NOMA actually is

NOMA (North Manchester) is a joint venture between the Co-operative Group and Hermes Investment Management, covering roughly 20 acres between Victoria Station, Angel Meadow and the Northern Quarter. The masterplan, first unveiled over a decade ago, was always designed to run in phases over roughly 20 years rather than as a single build — which is precisely why it's a good illustration of how major regeneration actually gets delivered in practice: not as one contract, but as a rolling pipeline of individual projects under one long-term vision.

Anchor buildings include 1 Angel Square (the Co-op's highly sustainable headquarters, one of the most efficient large office buildings in Europe when it completed), Federation House, and a growing cluster of residential towers and refurbished heritage buildings including the Grade II-listed Hanover Building.

What's currently under construction

NOMA's more recent phases have shifted toward residential and hospitality alongside the original office-led development. Recent and ongoing work in the district has included new build-to-rent residential towers, hotel development, and continued public realm work around Dantzic Street and the wider Angel Meadow park frontage. As with most multi-phase regeneration schemes, the mix shifts over time based on market demand — NOMA's early phases leaned heavily commercial, while its later phases have leaned more residential, reflecting the city centre's continued population growth.

Why a 20-year timeline matters for trades

For contractors and tradespeople, a scheme like NOMA is fundamentally different from a single-contract job. A few things make it worth understanding as a model:

• Sustained, not one-off, demand — rather than a spike of activity followed by nothing, a 20-year masterplan means a rolling need for groundworkers, M&E contractors, fit-out specialists and finishing trades stretched across a decade or more.
• Principal contractor relationships compound — the developers and principal contractors involved in early NOMA phases have stayed involved through later ones, meaning subcontractors who performed well on one phase are well placed to be asked back for the next.
• Standards get stricter, not looser, over time — later phases of NOMA have had to meet tighter sustainability and building safety requirements than the earliest buildings, which is generally true of any long-running UK scheme post-Building Safety Act 2022.

The lesson for Manchester's construction sector

NOMA is a reminder that not all of Manchester's most significant construction activity happens on a single, headline-grabbing tower. Much of the city's real, ongoing build volume comes from long masterplans like this one, delivered in phases, by a rotating cast of contractors and subcontractors over many years. If you're a Manchester-based trade business, understanding which long-term regeneration schemes are active near you — and who the principal contractors are — is often a better strategy than chasing individual high-profile projects as they're announced.

Whether you're subcontracting on a scheme like NOMA or looking for the next phase of work in the district, browse verified Manchester tradespeople and contractors on Wojo, or set up a profile so principal contractors can find you directly.