That is a view of some of the shops we had to work with and the slightly over 42 acres that we ended up acquiring, launching and building Liverpool One on. It was predominantly either surface car parks produced from the demolition of Council Offices or Chavasse Park. The Park is interesting because it was a big bombsite left after the war and was only turned into a park, as there was no other better use for it. When we came to excavate the park to build our four layers of underground car park we had many archaeological issues including finding intact all the basements of the pre war buildings. The existing buildings were predominately low rise and predominately post war. There were no listed buildings and the oldest building in the city centre was the Bluecoat School. There were a lot of surface car parks.


We had some interesting neighbours with the Merseyside Police Headquarters on one side and, possibly, the largest law courts outside London on the other. Overall it was a tricky site but the trickiest thing of all was the 275 land interests that we had to acquire in order to develop the site. There was no single landowner. When we won the job in 1998/99 we had to start thinking about how we were going to deal with the largest city centre CPO in recent years. Highway CPOs often have similar huge numbers but this was different as values were so high. Our range of compensation was from £200 for a palm reader through to £43,000,000 for Top Shop/Top Man. There were about 20 others over £10,000,000 and many small interests all to be carefully and individually settled. Amazingly, even with 275 acquisitions, we have only been to the Land Tribunal once and I am endeavouring not to back again.


The case Grosvenor submitted to the City Council for the selection process did not include master plans or viability exercises but principles such as connectivity and how Liverpool One fitted in with the city and replaced that huge void in the city centre.


Liverpool and huge change was needed to bring the area back into use.


This shows how the site is shaping up. Strand Street is an interesting road as it is effectively the equivalent of the M6 motorway running through the city centre and separating the Albert Dock, one of the biggest tourist destinations of the city centre, from the rest. To restore connectivity the obvious thing was to build a tunnel for pedestrians, but we found that there was a main high-pressure sewer from Manchester running underneath the Strand so an underpass was not possible. And as we had already established that people would not use bridges Rod and the excellent Master Plan Team BDP had to come up with another solution. This was the simple idea of building a high quality road crossing near to the Hilton Hotel using high quality materials and at- grade crossings and it works. Huge amounts of people travel across the Strand six-lane motorway going to the city centre and there have not been any accidents so far. Drivers have learned that to get into Liverpool you have to take extra time. The solution is pedestrian orientated and that is important.


Liverpool One sat between the retail heart, the business district, the Rope Walks (a regeneration area where rope used to be made on the streets) and the water fountain on the Albert Dock, the focal point of a 1980s regeneration. Nobody went into this 40-acre site before 9 o’clock in the morning or after 5.30 at night. It became a complete void in the middle of


ASSET - Liverpool-10


Another principle of Rod and the Master Plan Team was that we are not building a shopping centre. Liverpool One was not to be an anonymous mass plonked down in the city centre like the Trafford Centre. It is important to understand that this was the most important principle of all. Grosvenor has done loads of shopping centres over the years, some good and some bad, but when one part of the shopping centre becomes obsolete you cannot take that little bit out, knock it down and rebuild it as it is part of a single structure. You have to take the whole lot out and start again and so the whole shopping centre gradually becomes obsolete bit by bit until it is viable to knock down the scheme. What Liverpool wanted was a series of 30 different individually designed buildings by 30 different architects, so it feels like a new city centre in the city centre and not like a shopping centre. It is generally open to the air but with a few arcades that are covered with weather protection. But the principle is that there are 30 different buildings. For example building 6 houses Waterstones on the upper floor with part of a hotel above that and a number of different retailers on the ground floor. If that building becomes obsolete because of either a building defect or it becomes just not fit for purpose, that single building can be knocked down and rebuilt. However the quality that we have built in and the very strict maintenance regime we have


Guy Butler 55


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