MORE than £250m of city centre investment was given the green light at an epic planning meeting yesterday.

Shoppers at the St John’s Centre can look forward to the £100m overhaul of the facilities after approval was granted.

A 400-room hotel complex – including a luxury 4-star wing – will be built metres away at Lime Street station.

And one of the city’s landmark Victorian dock systems was also granted permission for a huge renovation.

£100m facelift for St John's Shopping Centre

LAND SECURITIES’S £100m facelift for the St John’s centre was last night hailed as a model response to Grosvenor’s Liverpool One.

The owner of the centre was given the green light to overhaul St John’s by councillors yesterday.

Liverpool’s planning manager said continued investment was the best way to ensure the rest of the city, apart from Liverpool One, was “bolstered”.

Work will start on the St John’s scheme in the autumn and the final phase is due to be completed by late 2012.

But traders at the indoor market said Land Securities had not consulted with them on the plans.

There are concerns the market, which will be relocated to the first floor of an extended Williamson Square building and reduced in size, will not be big enough to house all the stalls.

Architects moved to allay those fears, saying the space would accommodate everyone. The new market will be smaller than current facilities but the meeting was told that space is not full.

Shoppers will enjoy dramatic improvements to the internal and external appearance of the centre, which will feature new double-height retail malls, glass fronts to many shops looking on to the streets and roof spaces allowing more natural light in.

The centre will expand on to Houghton Street, Elliot Street and Roe Street.

Cllr Warren Bradley, Liverpool City Council leader, said: “With Liverpool One already being a success it is important we ensure our existing shopping centres thrive.

“Land Securities are showing great confidence in Liverpool with their ambitious plans for refurbishing St John’s centre which will regenerate this part of the city centre.

“The centre and market have been an established part of the Liverpool shopping scene for nearly 40 years and they can now look forward to a very bright future.”

The centre was built in 1969 and last refurbished 19 years ago but has begun to show its age.

Both the architects and members of the planning committee said the building was “tired”.

Committee chairman Cllr John Irving said: “It’s tired and it’s past its sell-by date.”

The council’s planning manager Nigel Lee told the meeting that after Liverpool One opened “there was always the danger the rest of the city centre would be harmed”.

But he added: “In the first instance, what a great response from the other owner to come in with a £100m offer.

“It’s the best response to make sure the rest of the city is bolstered.”

Market trader John James addressed the meeting on behalf of the stall holders.

He said: “We’ve got a lot of concerns in the market – we feel we haven’t been consulted enough.

“It’s a very exciting new building, but we want more consultation and more assurances.”

Stanley Dock scheme gets the go-ahead

STANLEY DOCK will see renovation work start at the beginning of 2009, the owner’s agents said last night.

Liverpool planning committee yesterday granted permission for the site to be transformed into more than 900 apartments, offices and leisure facilities.

The tobacco building is thought to be the largest brick building in Europe, but the site has been derelict for almost 50 years.

Hugh Stallard, a founding director at property agents Spring 4, who are acting for owners Kitgrove, refused to comment on whether funds were in place to bankroll the £120m scheme.

But he said he hoped to work with the city council over the next six months to finalise the programme.

Although he hopes work will begin on site at the start of 2009, he insisted it was necessary to “watch this space” when asked for a guarantee of the timetable.

The plans include hollowing out the centre of the Grade II listed tobacco warehouse to create an internal car park and garden courtyard surrounded by new homes.

The 200m long, 50m wide building caused a headache for architects because so little light made it to the centre. Coring out the centre was thought to be the only way of making the space habitable.

The building will also have 11,000 sq m of office space and 2,790 sq m for exhibitions.

There will be an exclusion zone on part of the roof to provide a nesting area for peregrine falcons.

More than 900 flats will be created in the three warehouses on the site, with 634 duplexes in the 14-storey tobacco warehouse.

Because there is currently only 2.3m between each of the floors the duplexes will be partly double height and with a mezzanine floor for sleeping space.

The area makes up a large proportion of the city’s Unesco World Heritage site.

Howard Carter, director of architecture at Thinking Space, said the design had been “conservation-led”.

He added: “It was a major test to integrate it and make it accessible at ground floor level. We’ve put a lock bridge across the canal and we’re making maximum use of the building’s waterside location and also giving public access to the site.

“A major challenge was how to use the  tobacco warehouse because it’s such a complex building.”

The Grade II* listed five-storey neighbouring north warehouse will have cafes, restaurants and bars, and 135 open-plan flats.
 A 20th century extension and a silo will be demolished.

Reflective sails will be installed on the dock to shine extra light on the side of the warehouse.

An annex to the Grade II listed south warehouse will be demolished and the remaining building converted into 149 flats, business and retail space.

THE development, which includes underground car parking, is expected to take six years to complete.

Kitgrove have owned the site since buying it from receivers in 1998. They unveiled similar plans in 2003 and secured planning permission to convert the north warehouse into 84 apartments.

Mr Stallard said in 2003 they hoped that phase would be completed “well before” 2008”, but work never started on the scheme. He said that was because, while the planning consent established the principle of converting the buildings into apartments, the scheme was not intensive enough because the apartments were too large.

He told the Liverpool Daily Post: “That’s why we applied for a master plan for the whole site.

“We want to get started on this as soon as possible. I would like to be all ready to go at the beginning of 2009. It’s phased and we would like to see it done as soon as  reasonably possible.”

The dock system was designed by Albert Dock mastermind Jessie Hartley and built  between 1850 and 1857, with the tobacco warehouse added in 1901. Mr Stallard added: “The scheme sets the listed buildings - the north and south warehouses and the tobacco warehouse - back into their original setting.

“The challenge is for everybody to work together to find uses for those buildings to maintain them for future generations.”

Councillors only narrowly granted permission, with six committee members voting for the plans and four voting against.

Objections were raised about the number of one bedroom apartments. With 409 out of 918, they make up 44.5% of the development, even though the council aims to cap new developments to 40%.

Committee chair Cllr John Irving said if the application was for a new tower block he would have insisted on the cap. He told councillors that because of the complexities of the site it was “this scheme or nothing”.

He said: “Out of all the schemes, I think this scheme is one of the best we have seen.

“It’s take it or leave it time and I personally think it’s we have got to go forward.”

Objecting, Cllr Anna Rothery said: “This flies in the face of everything that we are trying to achieve.

“I would love to see it developed, but one bedroomed apartments at that level – what’s to say you are going to have 500 derelict apartments down there in five years’ time?”

£50m hotel to be built next to Lime Street Station

A 17-STOREY, £50m hotel complex will be built next to Lime Street station.

Approval for the plans was granted by Liverpool councillors yesterday.

It will include a luxury 4-star, 209-room hotel joined to a 195-room 2/3-star hotel.

The complex will be run by Clarion and will be only their second in the UK – the hotel-iers are currently building their first in London.

The Limerick-based Chieftain group own the land, on the corner of Skelhorne Street and Bolton Street, and will also build the property.

Sean O’Sullivan, chief operating officer of the Chieftain Group, said his company chose Liverpool because there were opportunities here other cities no longer offer.

He said: “We felt Manchester was cooked, but Liverpool still has opportunities and still has demand for hotels. Clarion have a quality operation that they are rolling out across the UK and Europe.”

The building will be v-shaped with the apex at the junction of the two roads. The 4-star hotel will have its entrance on Skelhorne Street, with the 2/3-star hotel exiting on Bolton Street.

Mr Sullivan said he hoped work would start by the end of the year and that the hotels would be finished by 2010.
 It is the company’s first construction project in Liverpool.

They bought the site three years ago and permission was granted for a 151-room hotel and 88 apartments in February, 2007. Mr Sullivan said this plan never got under way because of fears about the housing market.