The delays with the sadly mis named "Neighbourhood Centre" has been delayed for several reasons, One of the big problems has been most local people have confused the term Neigbourhoood with Community the fomer actually just means "its round here!), the Mike Lane Neighbourhood Centre is basically a housing and shopping development-maybe a community room in a fire station. Imagine the scenario...the community meeting starts.Alarm bell goes off..NEE NAH NEE NAH NEE NAH .meetign stops meetign restarts
....get the picture.

As Richie "Dick" Keenan said only this week "This was never never never going to be a community centre" and he should know he is deputy chair of kenny regen anda director of Parks Options.

the site is infested with Japanese Knotweed ( a natural laxative apparently) and the site needs costly decontaminating. The sod breaking ceremony is taking place shortly, and there will be no shortage of "sods" to choose from.

It was originally going to make money through office spaces but nobody was interested (the rental rates were full commercial ie liverpool City Centre????)

There was going to be 91 flats....except now nobody wants flats now...they're havng a rethink on that one

The rest of the centre is going to have shops...this is an area with probably the worst range of shops in Liverpool...(I live there so I know).pretty good if you want a kebab, a tan, or a bottle of cheap cider, but not much else. There wa a rumour that Iceland were opening a shop but with the banking crisis in that country I diont think that is likely.

The whole scheme is costing ?19 million so they say, and at the last count, generous Kenny Regen are putting in at least ?2million.

My prediction is once the knotweed has been got rid of, the fire station will go up (watch out for the traffic chaos at the junctin of sheil/Beech Perscot road eveytime there is a "Shout"),

the grade 2 listed building on the site will be converted into four two bedroom flats (planning permission for this was applied for well over a year ago),

if the other flats are built Tom McGuire at C7 will snap them up at a bargian price (hopefully cheaper than the ones they area still trying to sell in Laurel road)

and a few empty shop units laying ide because the rents they are asking are too onorous.

The local communtiy's cut from all this, well apparently the Company which will take over from Kenny regen in 2010 wil get the ground rent, oh yeah the consultant company iniolved is from Manchester (How annoying is that!).



Watch this space for the chickens coming home to roost on this one.