LIVERPOOL ONE AND THE CITY CENTRE; A 10 YEAR RETROSPECTIVE
Introduction
I am from, and was educated, in South Wales, and in 1999 eventually arrived in London to work for the Duke of Westminster’s Property Company, Grosvenor. A year later I moved to Basingstoke, quite a difference, to work on Festival Place. Three and a half years later we created a regeneration project that transformed Basingstoke from a dormitory town for London into a dominant retail and leisure destination, sitting between Reading and Southampton, to other similarly regenerated areas.
In 2002 I was shipped into Liverpool, a prospect that I dreaded, but frankly now I do not intend to leave and I am building up a business here for Grosvenor North West, finding development opportunities and showing that we can generate good properties in the North West.
Liverpool One Overview
Back in 2002 I began working for Rod Holmes. Rod retired from Grosvenor a couple of years ago and I took over from him on the development side of Liverpool One. He is an incredible character and the real inspiration behind Liverpool One. Without Rod Liverpool One would not be happening. Rod came to Grosvenor for the Liverpool project and in 2002 the Project Team was just Rod and I. Before then he had been working the project single handed for 3 or 4 years. After 2002 we had a very tight team for a few years until eventually the team exploded and we ended up with about 45 people working on the project plus about 1500 consultants supplying various specialist services. Now we are back down to a small number of people working in a much smaller office in Liverpool yet still delivering. For example we have just signed up a Premier Inn 185 bed hotel and last year we opened a Hilton Hotel. There are a number of other loose ends to complete to make sure that the project is completely finished, but predominantly Liverpool One opened in 2008 in time for the Capital of Culture.
Grosvenor Overview
Grosvenor is essentially a regional family owned company, although it is able to compete with the big developers such as Hammerson and Land Securities. Grosvenor takes a long-
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term view but ultimately to get our bonuses every year we have to show short-term performance. However the family has been around for more than 330 years and wants to be around for the next 330. I am often told that I will not be remembered for doubling the size of the company, or doubling the amount of profit, but I will be remembered for loosing them a lot of money. That is an important statement because it shows Grosvenor is looking for long term, safe, risk adverse growth so we have to perform and find growth in the right sectors.
We grew to be a world wide company in about 1950 when the company sold half of its London estate and diversified around the world in Canada, America and so on. Now Grosvenor is the only international UK based property developer. There are few similar companies that have such investments across the world. When you read our annual report you will see that we operate as far a field as Shanghai and Tokyo, we have several offices in Australia and even in Brazil we have a number of investments; we are a very diverse company.
To put Liverpool One into perspective, this is equivalent to about a sixth of the equity of our business so for Grosvenor, a huge diverse company with major investment in Mayfair, Belgravia and now Liverpool, Liverpool One was a huge undertaking. Had any other company taken it on I think they would have given up half way but not Grosvenor as our shareholder, the Duke of Westminster, takes a very long-term view. He was very close to the project and this, together with the strength of Rod Holmes, has managed to get us through it. You could find all the gossip and the bad news about our losses if you want to go delving into the press, but we stuck with it and we made it work. Liverpool One was a unique project and given the current financial crisis a project of this scale is unlikely to be repeated for some time.
The Contents of this Paper
This paper will deal with why Grosvenor got involved with Liverpool One, what the potential was and how we did it and how we animated the project and made it an interesting scheme. Also I will deal with the variety of the scheme (it has something for everybody), the delivery of the project, funding, how it is trading, the management of the completed project, the opening of the scheme and the accolades we have won.
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