I must admit, I was a bit perplexed at that. To the wider city it has little relevance in terms of status or prestige.
That said, having an hangar facility and the associated jobs is good for the airport. The problem is, for the size (and success) of the airport, MAN is in the rather unusual position that it doesn't actually have a based airline. By based I mean headquartered which often leads to a company hangar. Perhaps going forward, perhaps easy might consider a facility if it were to ever bring MAN's engineering in-house.