ARCHIVE: September 2004

Off to the Big Smoke
News that FACT's founder and executive director Eddie Berg is to join the long list of scouse emigrés who go on to do great things abroad as well as at home.


FACT

Eddie has played a major cultural role in Liverpool's downtown revival and has delivered one of the few truly contemporary buildings in the past 20 years. We say thanks and good luck to him in his new career in London. And for the new appointment?
FACT was packed last weekend and will continue to thrive in Liverpool. the King is Dead. Long Live the King.

The luck of the Irish
Downtown’s much acclaimed architectural gem, the Liverpool Irish Centre on Mount Pleasant, is in need of £1m in order to restore the building to its original quality. With public funds being used to demolish perfectly good modern buildings, rather than being pooled to help renovation initiatives like this, our conservation minded interests are deeply worried. The Irish Centre once hosted vital cultural activities wouldn’t this be a brilliant legacy for 2008?

Downtown tourism set to boom?
After a set back with regards to hotel stays this year tourist bosses are launching a whole series of strategies to enhance visits to the ‘city-region’. Not quite there yet, but we see the dreaded ‘Mersyside’ has slipped out of the lexicon! Start your enquiries here.

Welcome Home!
With students now pouring back into the city, we must remind ourselves what a vital and positive contribution they make to downtown life.

The Government initiative for a National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship may help those thousands who would love to make this city their home permanently to do so, and build up the downtown economy at the same time!
DL and its partners have long campaigned for support that would enable graduates to establish business in the city, business that would help build the job base for the other students just requiring a job [link].

Celtic cousins ahead of the graduate game once more
But why all the messing about for so long? They should have just gone to Ireland and see what they have been up to for years?

Wirral runs downtown?
News that Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council is concerned that Ian Simpson's Brunswick Quay will adversely affect their view of Liverpool's waterfront and the 'WHS' [link]

Is this the insufferable consequences of our WHS designation bearing fruit, or indeed is it a savvy move by WMBC to get all of the tall quality stuff built on Liverpool's Left Bank?

"..If people come from anywhere to have a look at the Liverpool skyline they have to come to Wirral to see it. We have to make sure nothing will detract from this.."

Might not Wirral look at their own planning decisions over the last twenty years at Birkenhead /Woodside to see which development is more likely to detract tourists from enjoying the experience of actually being on that side of the river - view or no view!

WMBC might want to take a leaf out of Shanghai's book to see how development on the other side of the Huangpu River opposite the historic Bund should be done.



Of course we want it!
Plans and sketches of the proposed development of Brunswick Quay went on display today [more].

Get down to City Exchange, Old Hall Street, give your support and say hello to all the nice folk at LDP&E whilst your there!
Also, don't forget to email Maro developments with your support before the likes of the CPRE (huh?!) put the dampeners on it!

Brunswick Quay visualisation
credit: Ian Simpson Architects


Pieces ‘08’
New branding, logo and world-wide publicity drive for Liverpool European Capital of Culture 2008 launched downtown this week. Raises vital revenue for events that LCC will manage www.liverpool08.com
Give your support, and remember it’s YOU that won it!

Going down.. but growing UP!
An exclusive from the Liverpool Echo’s Business pages section reveals that far from clearing Concourse House in order to reveal the train stations ‘Victorian splendour’ plans are afoot to replace it with a 30 storey tower! Excellent news we say. Onward and upward! [Check out our earlier article]


Not everybody’s coming to the Party
Capital of Culture should help us to build up our infrastructure - but have we any?

Not unless this links page from the Northwest Culture Consortium [huh?!] has missed out all the Liverpool-based institutions, as well as Capital of Culture itself, by mistake!


Pointed Success
Just a quick reminder to look out for the excellent new pedestrian signage downtown; modern, clean lines, legible, almost cool! Complementing the older buildings perfectly - Well Done Liverpool City Council!


Hope for All
The funky Hope St Hotel has won ‘Newcomer of the Year’ in the prestigious Good Hotel Guide. Investment of this type downtown will be the long term driver for the city…WELL DONE! [Times].

Downtown Liverpool is THE SAFEST!
Downtown is just the greatest place to be, as we have always said. Now statistics just released prove that downtown Liverpool is the safest for business, visitors, shoppers and residents in the UK.

Initiatives like Business Crime Direct [link] have proven their success and shows the real benefits of partnerships with police, LCC and Liverpool Chamber.

Download AxA Crime report at link

World-Beating Replacement Planned.
Or -er maybe not.
News that the Regional Development Agency's £43m orginally earmarked for the 4th Grace is to go to a new Museum of Liverpool.
Are we alone in wondering how this scheme which is already being described as:

'not obtrusive..possibly only two stories high - in no way detracting from the skyline.. and World Heritage Site'

can also be

'a massive world-beating statement and one of the biggest new museums in the World'

These sort of statements do the credibility of Liverpool even more harm after the fourth grace debacle. WHS and BIGNESS just don't mix!

A State of Independence
Downtown culture Queen, Jayne Casey is to open a new ‘village’ for independent artists and creatives currently unable to find affordable downtown space. An initiative of The Afoundation we can only say well done… and more power to downtown! More info


Tide turns in rush to live downtown
We make no apologies for lifting that headline straight off the article from the Daily Post.
Great headline, excellent piece.
Brilliant news – couldn’t better it. Not only downtown but the whole city population has started to grow once more, and this is only the bit ran by Liverpool City Council!


David Marks
Architect of such noted schemes as the London Eye and Liverpool Watersports Centre wants to build an apartment complex in Dingle, South Liverpool that will be partly powered by sustainable sources built into the scheme. Scale, detailing and location will create a great scheme.

Marks Barfield was also the practice who last year proposed that Liverpool house one of their ‘Skyhouse’ schemes too - hope this gets a better and less ignorant response!


Booze laws set to change
Downtowners should be aware that LCC want to consult on changes to Licensing, which has particular bearing on quality of life downtown. Go to LCC link

Don’t Get Caught Out!


A reminder that extensive roadworks are in place downtown and will be for the foreseeable future.
Check out the latest update before you get the car out. Whilst you're there check out the news for the excellent European Car Free Day on the 22nd.

Underwhelmed?
See how overwhelmingly eager citizens of Liverpool are in celebrating the news of WHS and how popular the site is with people wishing to share their experiences of a mercantile - maritime city extraordinaire!
www.worldheritagesite.org


Paradise Street off to a Swinging Start
Downtowners will have noticed the cranes, cones and construction as PSDA starts to kick-in. Keep yourself posted of developments at www.liverpoolpsda.co.uk

Excavations at Chavasse Park are truly fascinating, the archeologists unearthing gilded picture frames, rooms, alleys all sorts of urban ephemera. Go and take a look.

It reminds us, Chavasse 'Park' is not a 'park' it is a bomb site, formerly home to thousands of people, hundreds of buildings and businesses. It is in the heart of downtown, full of urban streets and blocks.

Is it too much to hope for that PSDA might give us some of this density back?


There’s only ONE downtown in Britain
So good/sexy/vibrant/cultural/sophisticated (etc) is the tag ‘downtown’ that even the quangos are beginning to appreciate the unique brand quality for us.

There’s only one, and it’s Liverpool.

Remember kids, the BRAND is the PLACE!
And the PLACE is the BRAND!...use it!

Walking the walk
Downtown is just jam packed full of goodies and now you can find your way round them all with an interactive map. You could play it as you walk downtown on one of those kids personal DVD players being advertised for this Christmas….PLEASE! It’s only September.

Better downtown Living
Downtown developers and estate agents could add a fantastic dimension to Downtown Week 05 if they grouped together to promote this type of event. We have highlighted stuff like this before…it works…sell more apartments and help the downtown revival even more!

Fixing a hole
Downtown developer Iliad (recent winners of two awards at the ‘Your Move’ Awards) are on site in Matthew St building a restaurant and offices on the hole made when planners demolished the buildings that included the Cavern Club many, many years ago. On that note, wouldn’t it be great living above Flannigan’s Apple?...well…if you were a Beatles nut!

Downtown retrospectives
A quick reminder of just how far downtown perspectives have evolved in the last twenty years…all seems a little seedy now! When we know the downtown reality has always been able to be this