Comment: Liverpool shapes a grand future

Jun 11 2008 Liverpool Daily Post

THE fact that European Capital of Culture represents the beginning of the regeneration process for Liverpool, rather than the end, is illustrated by our main story and inside spread today, on Pages 6-7.

At an epic planning meeting yesterday, more than £250m of city centre investment was given the green light.

It means shoppers at the St John’s centre can look forward to the £100m overhaul of the facilities after it was granted approval.

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 granted permission for a huge renovation, with Stanley Dock being 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.

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

However, a question mark still hangs over the ambitious project, with no assurances that funding is in place to bankroll the £120m scheme, nor of the timetable for work to begin.

Given that Liverpool has a long history of grandiose schemes which sound fine on paper but ultimately come to nothing, it will indeed be necessary to "watch this space" to see how this scheme develops.

Of far more certainty is a much-needed £100m overhaul of St John’s shopping centre. This complex has been stuck in a 1970s timewarp for too long, and its facilities and gloomy lighting now seem to belong to another age, particularly in comparison with the state-of-the-art Liverpool One development.

While there must always be room for centres which provide shops for those customers who have a limited budget to stick to, they deserve a decent shopping experience just as much as more well- heeled ones.