Spruce up this ‘ghost town’ and help us out, says pub boss

Oct 27 2008 by Mike Chapple, Liverpool Daily Post

Spruce up this ‘ghost town’ and help us out, says pub boss

THE owners of Liverpool’s Baltic Fleet pub are demanding action be taken to spruce up the adjacent building site whose derelict “ghost town” appearance, they claim, has cost them thousands of pounds in lost business.

The historically-renowned waterfront pub, whose microbrewery produces the Wapping range of award-winning beers, has just had thousands spent sprucing up its own appearance in a project dubbed Operation Butterfly, the first part of which has just been completed.

Now the pub’s executive chef and director, Ian Fielding, says it’s time for the authorities to do their bit and clean up the abandoned Baltic Triangle complex spanning The Strand and Hurst Street area next door, which was supposed to be the site of a £1bn high-rise apartment development until the project collapsed last year.

“We had to put up with the Big Dig road works affecting business, but this is something which has still not gone away and looks likely to remain here for some years to come,” said Mr Fielding, a Liverpool-born former British Army captain.

“The scaffolding has just come down on our pub after a new paint job, the roof having been completely repaired and inside we have renovated the first floor to seat 48 people for the Fylde’s restaurant. We call it the butterfly rising from the chrysalis – but right next to it is this ugly eyesore with those horrible fences which are supposed to screen the derelic-tion, but have only made things worse by making people think that we’ve shut down as well.”

Mr Fielding, who hosted a party to celebrate the completion of part one of the Butterfly operation on Friday night, has suggested a short-term solution of an arts project whereby the fences are painted with murals to take attention away from the abandoned high-rise tower and other uncompleted buildings standing behind them.

“It looks horrible, an absolute disgrace, so we’d love to make it into some form of artistic attrac- tion. We’ve asked the Biennial and the Capital of Culture people if they could help us with this, but both have said they are in delivery mode which I think is management gobblede-gook speak for we’re not interested.”

Mr Fielding is now appealing for some other arts funding organisations to get involved.

“Maybe we could make it an arts project whereby local schoolchildren use it to paint on. I don’t know but anything is better than this.

“In a so-called recession when we’re putting in all our savings trying to reinvent ourselves and stay above water we have also have this to contend with.”

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