Site Archive June 2004

Prince's Dock Towers
Pictures of the two new 'groundscrapers' have been released and DL hope to provide pics soon.

Downtown Hikes
Merseyside Travelwise have produced a map showing how walking round town benefits your health…We have one, and they are good…trouble, as usual, is that we can’t find any info on them, either online or in the bus stations!!! Well, maybe one day.

On the buses
For those who just can’t face the downtown hikes, here’s some good news. Downtowners will have noticed the Red open top tourist buses running round downtown lately, but did you know you can actually use them to get around too?

They form a great link between our otherwise disjointed downtown bus services. Hop on at Rodney St and jump off at London Rd…Now how many years is it since downtowners have been able to get round town like that?

Tapping the Downtown dynamic
Hopefully the silence over Quiggins means that our council are busily beavering away to ensure that this vital cultural and entrepreneurial incubator is not lost…..rich and diverse cities make for quality of life and good growth!

Big is Beautiful

Pier Head group

We have had a great response to the 'sacred skyline' article we ran earlier this month relating to the height limits on new buildings along the waterfront and in the city.

'..How can they limit development so much for the sake of one building.. '

'..Liverpool will fall too far behind if the current ideology of downsizing projects is not reversed.. '

The view above demonstrates that when quality and scale go hand-in-hand you start to create great cities.

Oblique thinking?...or a route to long term recovery? When looking at how we must shape the future of downtown revival in Liverpool, we must always be aware of the causes of decline in the first place.

If we go around Europe we see cities that where devastated by war but are now thriving. Ask yourself how come Liverpool struggled for so long to get back on its feet…and then subsequently collapsed so profoundly in the 1970’s? what happened to all the assets of the pre-war commercial behemoth that was?

A Little Bit of New York City

Rumford Place aka NYC [click img]

Check out the ground work at Rumford Place on Chapel Street - but look at the scale behind.

In the past Liverpool built appropriate to its need, resulting in the some of the best buildings in the UK.

Increasingly there is an insistence that building heights are lowered across the city in new developments.

Why? To conform with an intepretation of Liverpool as a "19th Century Port".

The question is will Liverpool's future be as an historic tableau or a modern, business friendly metropolis?

Central Station
CABE suggests that elements of Ballymore's scheme at Central Station are 'too ordinary'
[full report]

It's Good to Share
Everton FC's new CEO has indicated that he is 'open' to the concept of a ground share with LFC. Meanwhile a report commissioned by the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board is critical of LFC's planned relocation and suggests a prominent waterfront site in the disused central docks.

Living Above the Shop?
The slavish doctrine of adhering to a 295ft height limit on our waterfront is reaching new absurdities.

Will Alsop's Cloud has been forced back to the drawing board for a third time, and in order to reduce the height of the residential towers to rear, apartments may now have to be offered in the Cloud itself.


credit: alsop consortium

Should Liverpool Museum, FACT, the Walker put space on the residential market to pay their way?

Or can we just realise that if Aubrey Thomas had been told in 1911 not to exceed the height of St. Nick's Church - there would be no Liver Building at 295ft.

Let's please show the world we mean business in Liverpool, deliver the Cloud and Grow 'UP'.

Cruise Liner Terminal
At last the go-ahead has been given for the new pontoon and terminal building adjacent to Prince's Landing Stage that will form the new cruise liner 'facility' in Liverpool.


QE2 in Mersey, May 04  credit: Dave Evans

DL suggests that the Prince's Dock wall is breached with a high quality gateway to facilitate visitor access to/from Old Hall Street via Eduard Ross' excellent bridge.


Prince's Dock Wall - Barrier to Progress?

Chinese Arch
The current state of maintenance of the splendid Chinese Arch in Nelson Street is causing concern, with peeling paint, graffiti and general uncleanliness.

Facilities management across Ropewalks is a major issue and cost; how on earth will we look after an entire World Heritage site?!!

Old Hall Street
Work is nearing completion on the external landscaping outside the Radisson Hotel and Beetham Tower. Next time you are downtown take a minute to have a look at this excellent piece of public realm.

Is low density anti-democratic?
News that downtown wards had the lowest turn out (14% as opposed to a cross city average of 40%) indicates how low the downtown population still is in reality.


It’ll all end in tears!
News that a greatly truncated Elysian Fields in Colquitt Street finally won approval this week highlights the folly Liverpool is imposing on itself at present with regards to ‘appropriate’ development.

Originally a fine high density, mixed use scheme that would have contributed greatly to the growth of the Duke St area it has now lost a susbstantial part of its commercial element.

Imagine, this is going on all round downtown. In time how many millions of commercial sq ft and tens of thousands less downtown residents will be lost as the direct consequence of this type of muddled thinking

Watch out for similar consequences for Alsop's Cloud…if it can go ahead at all that is?

Calling All City Builders
The usual detractors of tall buildings will be out in force to repeat the mantra of 'too tall', 'too many yuppie flats' 'not in my back garden' when Ian Simpson, designer of the 50 storey Brunswick Quay, mentioned in DL last month, speaks in the Tate on the 22nd. [link]

Would all downtowners who love our city and its amour for the big and the beautiful come and support Ian at the Tate as he starts on his journey of trying to build anything bigger than a Georgian townhouse in Liverpool.. Good luck Ian!