Apparently the people who bought the old Whitehouse Pub, on the corner of Berry Street and Duke Street, are going to paint over the Banksy-painted rat that has adorned it for the best part of a decade.
Lewis's to make way for leisure/lifestyle/retail hub/haven/destination thing
Merepark’s Central Village, which will include the Lewis’s building, is set to redress the cash drain towards Liverpool One, but it’s not clear to me whether the city can support so many different retail/leisure/lifestyle hubs – is there genuinely enough cash being spent to go around Liverpool’s various city-centre areas?
Liverpool bans more bars for Lark Lane and Allerton Road
A rare good decision from Liverpool City Council, whose licensing committee has advised that no further licenses be granted for Aigburth’s Lark Lane or Allerton Road.
Reverend Billy exorcises a till at Bold Street's Tesco
Campaigning anti-consumerism evangelical preacher Reverend Billy exorcises a till in the Bold Street Tesco branch.
Ground share moves a step closer
I hate to say I told you so but, as I predicted, Destination Kirkby has been thoroughly kiboshed by the government.
It was, financially, a good deal for Everton and an affordable way out of a crumbling ground badly served by surrounding infrastructure.
But it was also a good few miles away from Goodison and came with a bundle of other leisure and retail strings attached.
Communities secretary, John Denham, was apparently worries about the negative impact on surrounding areas of a vast out-of-town development.
It’s almost enough to make one what Liverpool One’s management team made of it all.
Gordon Brown's visit to Liverpool and Ellesmere Port
As David Bartlett notes, Gordon Brown’s visits to Liverpool as PM haven’t always been the happiest of occasions.
Addressing the TUC today and telling them that public services will have to put up with some hefty spending cuts is unlikely to go down well either.
But Brown should use the opportunity to highlight some clear blue water between Labour and the Conservatives going into the general election next year.
Liverpool Food and Drink Festival
Look, I’m a big fan of food. I made an aioli dip all by myself to go with some fish I fried tonight, OK?
I love food, but I didn’t love the launch for Liverpool Food Festival today in Sefton Park.
I suppose in many ways it was a victim of its own success, but the congestion in the enclosure and queues evident throughout the day weren’t a lot of fun.
Tesco withdraws Hope Street application due to Facebook petition
In case it passed anyone by, Tesco withdrew its application to build a store on Hope Street, after a significant amount of protest emerged online, focussed around a Facebook group ,which ended up with over 4,500 members.
In a rare triumph of people power, Tesco’s indicated that it was prepared to acknowledge the level of public feeling and look elsewhere for a new site.
I think it’s fair to say that few people expected the supermarket megalith to heed any complaints, but heed them it did.
Someone who must be scratching his head over all of this is
08 Sep 09
Also posted in Life in Liverpool, Regeneration
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Mersey Ferry building wins an award – for being awful
I’m feeling a little vindicated in my view that the new Merseytravel ferry terminal and Beatles Story outlet is badly situated and unsympathetic to its surroundings.
Others have been more forceful in their views, and now the building has won the Carbuncle Cup, an architecture magazine’s award for the worst new building. Incidentally, One Park West – a building I think may be worse – was also nominated.
The ferry building is described as ‘a shining example of bad architecture and bad planning’ on the Building Design website. As I’ve said before, what constitutes bad architecture is open to debate and not something I’m qualified to judge.
But it should have been clear all along that the siting of the building as it has appeared was problematic at best: in front of the three graces and slap bang in the middle of a UNESCO World Fricking Heritage site.
Calling Liverpool artists – design the new Top Shop/Top Man store
Any passing readers who happen to be artists (there are regular readers, right?) might be interested to know that the Liverpool branch of Top Man/Shop is offering the opportunity to decorate one of their walls.