Downtown Organisation, Liverpool

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Hello Downtowners-

This e-digest is a Downtown Week 2005 special. We are helping to get this unique celebration of the heart of a great city up and running and the co-ordinating group are ready for take off in January. There are now over 50 businesses and institutions hosting events or offers for the week - downtown business promoting and arranging interesting activities is the best way to increase trade and visitors, so please put something on, promote it along with downtown week itself and let as many people know as possible.

We reported last month on a technical glitch on our servers which has led to emails not getting delivered to certain addresses - if you're one of this minority -it's now fixed, so Welcome Back!

All 22 previous editions of our e-digest are archived online so don't feel you've missed out!

Downtown

Kings Dock Gets Through Planning
But not before the owner of the Albert Dock gets shirty over parking. More urbanism, not more parking lots - is best for downtown business. Arrowcroft might want to follow this interesting thread on café l'urbanité discussing the role or not of downtown parking lots (as opposed to on-street, which we support).

Simple equation: provide enough parking lots and you remove the buildings that house the reasons for going downtown!


'City of London brought to Old Hall St'
So says the Liverpool Echo report on the £100m development by English Cities - Good! Will be nice to see a whole forest of Swiss Re's, Shards etc to help bridge the 1.5m sq ft of grade 'A' office space deficit facing downtown - this argument shouldn't be just about aesthetics - just good design supporting market demand. Better that than all the drab low-grade, low level stuff in the earlier masterplans that we saw for St Pauls!

But be warned. Even in London the heritage-obsessed have this sort of power, in a city that has roundly rejected their extremism - Liverpool of course has welcomed them with open arms and a whole army is waiting to 'manage' our 'historic environment'!


Bluecoat on the move (temporarily)
Long established arts and cultural centre 'The Bluecoat' is closing in order to undergo a massive transformation in time for 2008.


Downtown Buzzing
Well we found our answer to the question we posed in our last e-digest! The crowds are getting even heavier the nearer Christmas comes - the atmosphere is fantastic, nothing better than a bustling downtown to warm the heart. Hope those of you who don't live downtown are planning to make the trip sometime soon? Plan to stick around once the shopping is done in the city twilight : we recommend a drink in Rigby's Dale St, a meal in the stunning St John Restaurant and Bar, Victoria Street, a film at FACT and a very late night in the Everyman Bistro..

City

Scouse Bashing
Readers of the UK trade architecture magazine Building Design will have seen the big headlines this week 'Scouse Shame' : Urban Splash directors seem to have had enough of Liverpool's planning bosses - and we hear on the grapevine that Ian Simpson's Brunswick Quay looks doomed - will the last developers to leave Liverpool please turn off the lights..


Going round in circles
However. the next phase of the Movement strategy for downtown is underway. Improvements affecting Berry St and Renshaw St bus flows - Don't miss the bus!


Liverpool Big Dig
And a great idea to brand the infrastructure work programmed around the city over the coming years - have you seen the new logo on the buses?
We've said this many times - all the work going on in Liverpool is not a problem it's an ASSET!

Quick reality check though for the navel-gazers who think this is massively disruptive - check out Boston's Big Dig - the Original grandaddy of them all.. facts and figures


Paradise Street
We have opened a dedicated category on our Community Board for latest pictures and news from Grosvenor's massive streetscape development. We've had 20K visits to our forum in 12 weeks -have you registered yet?

City Sculpture
Patrick Neil is compiling a website of sculptures, monuments and other statuary for downtown and around the rest of the city. Please contact him if you can help with photos or other documentary material.


Starting Up?
The number of business friendly information points is, like we said last week on the downtown site, uncreasing daily it seems. One we really like though is the constantly improving South Liverpool.net. It now has a greatly expanded enterprise section. Quite comprehensive and well worth a visit for downtowners!

Metropolis

One Idea City
Exiting the old Mersey Tunnel into Birkenhead with its low-grade retail boxes and no real enterprise could have been a completely different affair. Downtown Stamford shows what could be (if WMBC pull their finger out).


National Wildflower Centre, Liverpool
Landlife at the NWC have been really making an impact lately. The are about to get a retro eco-system of solar panels for their centre as well as being chosen to head up CABE Space best practice development for biodiversity!


Bet they'll be rushing down from Cumbria - NOT!
Advertising on the telly does not cover our natural market, because the distribution is for 'Granadaland'! That is why the city's private sector don't bother -
can we suggest they spend the money at S4C instead..


BBC Move Upt' North - sorry, Upt'Manchester
News that 1800 BBC positions are to be relocated from London to Manchester met with a naïve welcome in some quarters in Liverpool. Whilst we might get some scraps from the table - where was the fight and foresight to build the infrastructure, lobby BBC bosses, etc to bring it to the European Capital of Culture?

Anyone who watches BBC News Northwest will understand what 'benefits' Liverpool gets from Regional media -broadcasting from Manchester!

National / International

Downtowners have the perfect chance to let the Government know what is great (and maybe not so great!) about living in downtown Liverpool. Please take time to visit the Future Cities Project website and complete the brief survey on attitudes to the city - the results will be fed through to the ODPM's Urban Summit in Jan 2005.

As we keep on saying, encouraging downtown incubators improves all-round business performance and the urban attraction: Wisconsin

Rush to edge-city or city-central in Oregon. Afraid we can't crow, we still do the same with 'inducements', remember, they nearly had Littlewoods!

Downtown dynamism and good conservation can meld beautifully downtown -see how they do it in Los Angeles. Mindless blanket preservation and heritage landscaping kills everything stone dead!

Remember the Wizard's Den? Tokyo does an interactive version of an old downtown favorite.

An interesting international take on Liverpool and the London Carriage Works hotel from Arcspace.com


Ready for Christmas?
This year's Christmas period promises to be extra special for downtown - the place has not been as buoyant for 30 yrs. We hope the number one resolution for downtowners is going to be to really help the continuing downtown revival take off.


Tony Sebo reading up for 2005's
downtown revival!


Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year from all the team at Downtown

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