PEERING down a deep, dark hole in the ground may not be the most obvious way to reflect on what has made Liverpool the city it is.

But, as fans of Marks & Spencer’s food might say, this is not just any old hole in the ground; it’s the specially created viewing space outside the John Lewis store, in Liverpool One.

If you stand at the round barrier above the viewing glass and look down, you will see the historic wall of the first dock built in the port of Liverpool.

The vision and foresight of the people who decided to build that first dock helped Liverpool become the city it is today. 

Over the decades, its fortunes and those of the entrepreneurs who spied their chances here, may have ebbed and flowed like the tide in the Mersey, but there is no denying it was Liverpool’s mercantile strength that created the city in the first place.

And if we are to believe what goes around comes around, it may be the port and the river that once again combine to give the city its next big economic advantage.

Now, instead of docks, proposals have been tabled to build a huge facility in the river off Seaforth to handle some of the largest container ships in the world.

And the shore side infrastructure needed to handle all the boxes off these megaships can create its own jobs and wealth.

These used to be called freight haulage but are now called logistics.

Next time you are crossing the river at Runcorn, look out for what’s being billed as one of Europe’s leading examples of the sort of logistics infrastructure that can help drive this region’s future economic growth.

It’s a vast warehousing and distribution centre with access to road, rail, port and airport freight facilities. Farther down the Mersey, far from being a constraint, the tidal range is being assessed for its potential to generate power.

On both sides of the river, the group that owns the port, the airport, the ship canal and sundry other North West success stories has ambitious plans for commercial, leisure and residential developments that could take a generation to deliver.

Inevitably, they have their detractors and doubters. But, if sustainable economic growth needs vision and foresight, the banks of the Mersey are surely where this region’s future prosperity lies.