After years of friction, a deal is close for a new £200m retail park on Liverpool’s Edge Lane, as Ben Schofield reports

CITY leaders are poised to sign a landmark deal with a developer, paving the way for £200m of investment in one of Liverpool’s most renowned grot-spots.

It will also finally draw a line under Liverpool City Council’s long-running dispute with Derwent Holdings, which owns Edge Lane Retail Park.

Planners and the landowner have been holding weekly meetings for months to hammer out the details of the scheme.

Derwent said it is on the cusp of agreeing to build a retail park with around 600,000 sq ft shopping space – half the size it originally hoped for.

If it gets the go-ahead, all the existing shops on the 100-acre Edge Lane retail park site will be torn down and new, higher quality units built to replace them. Derwent say the two sides have at least 95% of the scheme worked out and a planning application should be lodged by the autumn.

A deal would finally see the end of years of fall-out between Derwent and Liverpool council that has seen parts of Edge Lane left in disrepair – and both sides squaring up in court.

The current park is around 430,000 sq ft, meaning the new shops will total 170,000 sq ft more than the current site.

Derwent, owned by Isle of Man tycoon Albert Gubay, is also offering a number of “sweeteners” for their part of the deal.

Mr Gubay’s representative John Taylor and Derwent’s planning consultants DPP are holding regular meetings with the city’s regeneration body Liverpool Vision.

Last week, Vision received a 30-page dossier detailing the scheme. The concessions include: an extension to Mersey Care’s Rathbone Hospital; a larger “Victorian” style park to replace Rathbone Park; and a “grot-spot” free zone.

The city council launched a legal battle with Derwent over the clean-up of blighted areas of Edge Lane, including the old Traveller’s Rest site, which is still a pile of rubble.

Last night, Mr Taylor told the Daily Post: “We’re now in the final stages of agreement on the total retail. We have a proposal to deal with all the grot-spots: demolition, site clearance, hoarding, screening some off. That will stop all that nonsense.

“We’re just doing the final negotiating with the city planners and its advisors. We’re making massive progress. We’re 95% there or more.”

Architects have designed double-fronted shops that will be accessible from Edge Lane itself, as well as from car parks inside the retail park. This will, Derwent says, turn one of the key gateways into the city into an attractive boulevard.