Liverpool Sails Against
The Economy’s Rip-Tide
Businessman Dougal Paver casts an optimistic eye over Liverpool’s future
the global economy since it invented itself as Britain’s first trans-Atlantic super-port in the eighteenth century. Boom followed bust followed boom until the late 1930s, when a long decline, only recently arrested, saw the economy decimated and the population halve. But when we say ‘arrested’, what we really mean is that the bad old days have been firmly locked away, for momentous structural changes have re-cast the city in the last decade and, for the first time in generations, Liverpool’s economy is counter-cyclical. Whilst the UK economy went in to recession
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for 19 months, Liverpool’s unemployment fell for 18 of them. And whilst jobs and investment flat-lined Liverpool was busying itself with major plans that will propel the city forward. New exhibition halls, the redevelopment of
Stanley Dock, the now back-on-track Central Village, the giant Liverpool 2 container port, Cains’ Brewery Village and Land Rover’s continued growth at Halewood will add thousands of jobs in to the mix. And that’s before the tantalising prospect of up to 2,000 engineering posts at Cammell Laird, expected to be confirmed this autumn. Tere’s more, too, as the city’s tourism boom
drives investment in the city’s leisure economy. And whilst some fret over the glut of hotel rooms, wiser heads point to the value of competition in driving standards, out-bound sales activity and in sealing visitors’ first impressions of the city. Visit one hotel, the
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waterfrontmagazines.co.uk An artists impression of Cains Brewery Village
ew citizens can be as familiar with the slings and arrows of economic fortune as the average Liverpudlian. Te city has been at the mercy of
evidence suggests, and if all goes well people will want to return to try others they liked the look of as they wandered around. Te inexorable rise in visitor numbers suggests a measure of truth in all this. Factor in Liverpool’s long drive up-market and there’s now plenty for people of all wallets to enjoy. Gaps remain, however. Where’s our Portobello Road or our Clifton Village? Why no market like Vancouver’s wonderful Granville Island or Barcelona’s Boqueria? And what is to be done with Ropewalks, our most historic neighbourhood which the boom seemed to pass by? Te answer lies in Liverpudlians’ inventiveness. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, so do entrepreneurs. It won’t be long before someone plugs the more obvious gaps, but in the meantime, shop-by-shop, building-by-building, Liverpool is being reclaimed by a new merchant class who can see the city’s
potential, smell its opportunities and who have an instinctive feel for quality and diversity. Te public sector have played a major part in all this, of course, and the Prime Minister’s request to Mayor Anderson to host the International Festival for Business 2014 will provide the city’s entrepreneurs with a global shop window that business leaders are now embracing. It will be their continued appetite for risk and
for unleashing energetic capitalism that will propel Liverpool back to its former status as a world city - and there seem to be no shortage of them wanting to play their part.
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