The changing face of Liverpool
Mar 22 2008
by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post
With Liverpool undergoing huge regeneration, Peter Elson meets the men deciding the balance between redevelopment and preserving our heritage.
NEW town blues was a phase in popular use a few decades ago to describe the despair those poor residents felt about being shipped out of old towns to live in planned developments.
The only problems about these postwar urban utopias for their decanted populations were their inevitable isolation and, more visibly, their completely soulless atmosphere and utterly bland appearance.
What difference between Runcorn or Harlow? Kirkby or Cumbernauld?
How lucky for those that remained behind to continue enjoying the buzz and vibrant personality of a great city like Liverpool, where its many layers of development sit cheek-by-jowel, accumulated over several centuries.
There was no chance that a new town, built from scratch in a few years, could possibly accumulate the richness and diversity of a long-established city created on a piecemeal basis.
But old towns are far from immune from having their buildings redeveloped and replaced.
They, too, can suffer from a new syndrome related to new town blues, namely clone-town Britain, in which everywhere in the country is now resembling everywhere else due to comprehensive redevelopment.
And Liverpool is now joining this trend at a rapid pace. As the city has enjoyed an economic revival, developers have arrived chasing the money.
Nothing like this has been seen in the previous three decades. Missing out on the 1980s Thatcherite economic revival due to the Militant Labour council’s policies, you have to go back to the mid-1960s – early 1970s for a comparable upheaval in the city’s redevelopment.
Commentators have joked that Militant’s deputy council leader Derek Hatton by default did more for Liverpool’s conservation than any other figure.
Everybody is far from happy about this headlong rush to grab swathes of elderly buildings. All too soon these are reduced to rubble and replaced with bland glass, steel and concrete buildings in a style dubbed “cowshed architecture”.
There is far-ranging concern by groups such as Merseyside Civic Society that Liverpool’s hard-won (and potentially priceless) accolade as a World Heritage Site could be lost by reckless redevelopment.
One of the most vocal opponents is Wayne Colquhoun, founder and chairman of Liverpool Preservation Trust, who conducted a walk for the Daily Post around what he feared is the city’s most threatened Georgian building stock.
Keen to reassure the panicking public that all is not lost – or sinking fast into oblivion – Nigel Lee, Liverpool’s planning manager, and Henry Owen-John, English Heritage’s north west planning and development director, based in Manchester, requested a similar opportunity.
“I’m comfortable with looking after the city’s essential characteristics, looking at how you preserve significant buildings as well as accommodating new development,” states Nigel.
“Trying to keep the urban townscape while meeting the new office standards is very difficult. Often ceilings in old buildings are too low to take all the services now needed and it’s a big job finding new uses.
“We’ve seen Tower Buildings and the Albany go over to flat use and Westminster Chambers in Dale Street is undergoing restoration, but we need to keep supply and demand stable.”
Starting off from the council’s Millennium House, Dale Street (which contains Nigel’s office), we agree this is a successful refurbishment of old facades (including the former Daily Post office) with new infills.
Unfortunately, round the corner in Sir Thomas Street we’re immediately faced with what many Liverpudlians consider a catastrophic blunder.
Liverpool’s last complete street of Victorian office facades was forever spoilt when developer Illiad was allowed by both city council and English Heritage to demolish No 6, leaving a great gaping hole.
However, soon after conservationists called for English Heritage to reassess the situation, the building’s decorative stonework was mutilated , as witnessed by city council leader Cllr Warren Bradley, from his office opposite.
Illiad intend to insert a trendy glass-fronted atrium onto No 6’s site as part of its plan to create a new hotel which includes the former Municipal Annexe.
“We’d come to the initial conclusion that No 6 was not listable, as it’s the only brick facade in a row of stone ones,” says Henry.
“We agreed to demolition and then received request for a spot-listing, which is very difficult to deal with late in the day.
“The connectivity between the buildings is difficult and we understand Illiad’s problem with the old structure on this sloping sight and how a new building would resolve it.”
He denies that English Heritage bureaucrats are too slow to get off the mark, while quick-thinking developers run rings around them.
Nigel, who comes from Tuebrook and pledges his deep devotion to Liverpool, says: “You’ve got to go back 10 years and remember how dilapidated and derelict buildings were. We were losing historic buildings all over the show.”
Henry adds: “Some regeneration schemes are not to everyone’s taste, but we were actually losing old buildings because nobody was coming forward with schemes. Now we’re dealing with the problems of success.”
Henry extracts a piece of paper on which he has laboriously written out criticisms of the Royal Liver Building when new. Neil Gladstone despises it as “monstrous” and Prof Charles Reilly complains of its “lack of harmony”. Previously Sir James Picton dismissed Albert Dock as “a naked pile of bricks”.
What is Henry’s purpose in this? He says: “Major change will always be controversial and few people will share their views now.”
Yet if Gladstone, Picton and Reilly knew about Liverpool’s widespread redevelopment they’d be spinning faster in their graves than gas turbines on full throttle.
The Pier Head is undergoing fundamental change as the controversial new Museum of Liverpool rears up Leviathan-like, along with a new Mersey Ferries riverfront block. The new canal link across it removes vital public green space.
Both the new Museum scheme and ferries block, already completely transforming the city’s world famous river frontage, only went through on the casting vote of Lady Doreen Jones, the former planning committee chair.
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The Museum scheme involved demolition of Voss Motors, Mann Island, by Herbert Rowse, Liverpool’s most talented and famous architect.
“It wasn’t one of his best buildings and couldn’t be incorporated into the new scheme,” says Henry. “We’ve worked hard to keep important sight-lines between new buildings,” explains Henry.
In fact, it’s incredible this was allowed to happen. The English Heritage-listed Mersey Railway pumping station is untouchable in the midst of the scheme which will see three black-granite clad apartment blocks rear up on Mann Island.
If so much as a potting shed by architects Wren or Lutyens were touched in southern England there would be hysteria in the national press.
The new Liverpool of towering high rise has not been kept away from the historic city core, as in London, at Canary Wharf.
Meanwhile, Grosvenor’s vast Liverpool One retail development and regeneration around the Ropewalks/Duke Street area put increasing pressure on another area of historic properties.
“We’re very concerned about this. I get very angry and frustrated with the big property owners who don’t respond to our advice and warnings and are determined to go-ahead with their schemes,” says Nigel.
He chews his gum harder than ever and says: “I feel like a spinning top. If I advise refusal of permission to redevelop, the Daily Post business pages accuse me of stifling regeneration.
“If I give the go-ahead to new schemes then the conservationists are jumping up and down accusing me of destroying Liverpool’s heritage. It’s a no-win situation.”
peter.elson@dailypost.co.uk
Source:
Liverpool Daily Post
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