Pub Column: The Beehive, Paradise Street, Liverpool

Dec 6 2008 by Mike Chapple, Liverpool Daily Post

THE Pub Column tried to forget the economic gloom this week and dived head long into Thursday’s late-night shopping frenzy in the city centre.

In the past, Yours Truly would have sooner risked being in the Stretford End singing the infamous Harold Shipman Song than braving the horrors of the queues and dodging the Pushchair Army trundling Panzer Tank-like through the crowds.

But this is the first Yuletide to appreciate the Liverpool One shopping behemoth in all its glitzy glory.

Last year we were still locked in Big Dig misery and the One was a 42-acre wide impenetrable abyss, blockading many established businesses from their customers.

In this Christmas of 2008, however, rather than being an expensive hindrance, it’s become an asset bringing in a wealth of visitors with bulging wallets which a decade ago would have been beyond our wildest dreams.

The places where the upturn in fortune is most apparent are those pubs literally made no-go areas by the development.

One of them is The Beehive in Paradise Street.

When the Pub Column spoke to its licensee, Frances Lloyd, in the aftermath of last year’s Chrimble she was not a happy bunny. The pub had been locked into a debris strewn cul-de-sac hemmed in at one end by a Berlin Wall barricade behind which lurked the massive One building site.

The other end, onto Church Street, had been effectively barricaded by mobile burger bars and fruit and veg stalls. Frances argued that she was entitled to some compensation or rates reduction because the money from the seasonal trade which usually helped the pub through leaner periods in the year had been denied to them.

It’s all change this year, though, as Paradise Street has finally opened up into a sprawling boulevard of neon – a yellow brick road into One’s heart, bringing back all the pub’s missing passing trade and more. Now bereft of the detritus being brought in from the site, it’s become one of the most welcome pubs in town for the advent season.

This is especially since Frances and her loyal staff have transformed the interior into the alehouse alternative of the old Lewis’s grotto complete with upside down Christmas tree. This had Lady Penelope of Pensby – who has an obsessive fascination with anything Christmassey – cooing with delight.

It’s becoming a more cosmopolitan pub too and a favourite among foreign visitors giving flesh to the claims of the Capital of Culture gurus that the city is becoming a honey pot for tourism.

All of which, despite the credit crunch, has made Frances quietly optimistic about business in 2009.

So too is Stan Jones who, with wife Marie, runs the Old Post Office pub in School Lane around the corner. They have also had their own problems with The One and the Big Dig. Indeed, access from Hanover Street at one end and the mega precinct is still blocked off.

“But once that’s cleared, hopefully very soon, this place will be fantastic,” said Stan. “And when the waterfront is sorted out it’ll be like the new Barcelona.”

Are you watching at the Trafford Centre?