Downtown Organisation, Liverpool

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Hello Downtowners -

We hope you like the slight change in emphasis we are making to your DOWNTOWN website. Although we fully intend to keep you informed about good urbanism that is leading to downtown revivals around the world we want the site to be more of a practical and useful resource for downtowners and people looking to visit, invest and live in Liverpool.

This issue we take a special look at the Prince's Dock and celebrate this week our 2 millionth hit to downtownliverpool.org. THANK YOU. Please remember that you are all part of the downtown revival and if you stop, then it stops! Keep up the good work.

New online downtown community forum
Whilst ‘Ideas Central’ was very popular and successful we must admit that it had its limits. A reminder that to overcome these limitations we have introduced a new community forum so that issues can be discussed and debated in far greater depth, BY DOWNTOWNERS! Please sign on, take part and enjoy playing your part,

Downtown

Prince's Dock Rising


Princes Dock: November 2004, from Strand

The cranes are starting to rise for the first time north of the Pier Head at the heart of Liverpool's downtown waterfront. Are we at last - Building a City? Check out these following articles on news in and around the waterfront:

City Lofts Snapped Up
With news that Conran's City Lofts development has proven a hit with Liverpudlian residents rather than Irish investors - perhaps now is the time to re-examine the opportunity to open up the leisure and retail offer to the northern end of this waterfront site.


Remnants of the Prince's Landing Stage in situ

Downtown could have its own ‘Fishermans Wharf’ if long held plans to restore the former landing stage goes ahead, with smaller scale tourist and bistro business, right on the waterfront to complement the other top quality scale – what a place to live!

Check in at Alcatraz to see what we mean!

Mixing It Up!
News of a substantially bigger, better mix-of uses and building spec of the orginal planning application for the new Malmaison Hotel at Prince's Dock bodes well for future development around here and better integration with the rest of downtown Liverpool. link

On the Waterfront
We hear rumours that MDHC are shortly to do the same with a substantial portfolio of grade A dock real estate north of Prince's Dock.. Quality First please? And No to repeats of the South Docks fiasco: low density, poor infrastructure, architectural mediocrity etc etc .

For an interesting historical resumé of Prince's Dock goto BWpics.co.uk or better still read the classic by Melville 'Redburn'.

Will Still Hunting
Sad news that Alsop Architects has gone into receivership. We cannot help but consider if Liverpool played a part in this. Maybe not directly, but suffering the ego’s of public sector mandarins and trying to accommodate quite often arbitrary and sweeping instant changes to designs for ‘The Cloud’ can hardly have helped! The creeping pace of public sector led ‘regeneration’ bears no relation to private sector needs in a dynamic economy, you just can’t mess around with companies like they do!

Pickle This
Our city fathers are still getting in a pickle about Mann Island. So what on earth is all the shenanigans about proposals by National Museums Liverpool about then? Why are they having to resurrect a building lookalike of a shed that was demolished aeons ago? Surely the only controversy should be why we are still building facsimiles of the past - and pickling our city in aspic!

Lots of developments
City Lofts and Unity on-site, a new and spectacular tower being proposed by Beetham, and the ongoing saga of the Maro proposal for Brunswick Quay -you really MUST give these ones your support! Planning Committee meet this month.

City

Entrepreneur - and Parent?
Writer Dale Heywood has approached us requesting interviews for his new book on coupled and single parents as specific groups of entrepreneurs. They must be parents who have started their own business AFTER becoming a parent but beyond that there are no restrictions. Interested? Contact him on 07958 62 8890 or by email.

The Carriage - Works.
Congratulations to The London Carriage Works which won awards on three fronts at this year's Liverpool Food & Drink Festival which ended last week. The restaurant picked up the awards for 'Best Restaurant', 'Best Wine List' and the 'Local Produce' awards

Homotopia
Liverpool's first downtown gay and lesbian festival is curently underway. One of our best City Cllrs tried to to look into the potential for a gay village three years ago; this never got anywhere partly because the public sector went mooching for grants - rather than discussing the idea with local gay entrepreneurs! Homotopia runs until 10 Nov. more info

City Centre Movement Strategy
Now that the public consultation has ended on the proposed changes to Derby Square, Castle Street and associated bus movement -we are concerned that some aspects are zonal, anti-urban and will affect business and residential, particularly in Dale Street. Most of CCMS has been great -and the quality of work high - but can we please not resurrect the Shankland Plan. [credit: Liverpool Vision, note: pdf file]. Remember -'through traffic' is actually passing trade!

Metropolis

Bemrose Printworks at Aintree
A £7m scheme for the former printworks in Liverpool to build small industrial units has been announced using £2.4m worth of EU Objective One funding. The remaining funding is being provided by developers Centaur Property Investment Limited. Whilst we applaud the investment, doesn't all this out of town stuff shuffle the jobs pack? Don't forget the value-adding of downtown!

Sparkling Success
Well done Alliance and Leicester and Liverpool City Council for organising this year's firework displays at locations across the city. Safe, fun, well-managed and well attended. Were you one of the 20 000 who turned up to the two shows at Sefton Park in the south of the city - 100 000 in total across the city!

North East says No
The UK Deputy PM's bid for a Regional Assembly was given a 6-1 thumbs down by the public in Newcastle and the North East of England. A lesson for Liverpool could be that we are best served by strong City Regions. For evidence of what effect regionalism can have, check out this story from today on our Film Industry.

National / International

Interesting article from Cincinnati about the danger of failing to provide sufficient downtown residential. A delicious irony is if only Liverpool had a wealth of metropolitan banks to prevaricate about downtown investment?!

The Finnish keeping an eye on Liverpool's commercial growth.

Whilst it’s all gone quiet down on Mann Island - we have heard that plans will be revealed later this month! - check out Tampa Bay's attempts to whip up financial support to bolster its existing museum and art gallery.

City of Victims - or Great Metropolis? No not Liverpool - New York City link

As debate continues to gather pace about what drives wealth creation downtown then the absurdity of anti-development controlling the debate is apparent even in NYC.

An excellent and objective look at how downtown dynamics are beginning to reshape conventional methods of ‘town planning’ from the Canadian Government.

Check out this interesting medium density housing development: ecological districts in Adelaide and land-use from Fremont as models for inner city and towns in the Liverpool Bay Area perhaps?

Also, more traditional forms of affordable downtown housing from Denver.

For those of you out there wanting the latest and most comprehensive list of what’s going on in the world of urban planning and regeneration could do worse than starting here at the Nottingham University , School of the Built Environment planning database. Very, very big and impressive - Recently updated too!

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