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Posts tagged ‘lime street’

Rapidly diminishing heritage

This is a sort of short follow up to the most recent blog post on the Futurist cinema, which was demolished against the wishes of a vocal number of Liverpool’s citizens.

Another planning application raising eyebrows is one put in to demolish parts of the Rapid Hardware building on Renshaw Street. This is a well known landmark for anyone who’s spent any time in the city. It also happens to be where I first bought a lot of archaeological health and safety kit! Read more

The future and the Futurist

And so the Futurist cinema is coming down.

It’s been on the cards for a few months, and now people are generally coming to the opinion that it was inevitable (for which read ‘the Council pretended it wouldn’t be demolished, but always intended to demolish it anyway’). But I’m not here to debate conspiracies, because you get nowhere, and what’s done is done (by the time you read this). Read more

Liverpool Underground: tunnels, digs and docks

Today we’re stepping way back into Liverpool’s history, and also seeing how it can tell us something about the city of today. Read more

We’re all living future memories of historic Liverpool

Memories are liberally scattered around this week’s links. Photos of life in Liverpool, plus revealing the hidden corners of the city, and life on the Home Front. Read more

Another voice in the debate: is Liverpool changing for the better?

Hope Street

Hope Street, by SideLong (from Flickr)

We’ve seen how the debate is continuing over recent changes and development to Liverpool’s city centre. For a couple of years people worried that the centre was getting preferential treatment – and money – compared to the more needy suburbs. Now that change has swept across Chavasse Park and Hope Street, the moans are more concerned with how the old is being swept away to be replaced with the bland, average new. Today Ed Vulliamy comments in the Guardian how Hope Street, “one of Europe’s great boulevards, connecting the eccentrically massive gothic Anglican cathedral with the 1960s Catholic one” is being wrecked by new development. He also singles out the Maghull Group, and their ‘Hope Street Portfolio’. Personally, I find their slogan – “Invest. Develop. Construct.” – quite terrifying, along the lines of Veni. Vidi. Vici. And now we find that they bought part of the Liverpool College of Art complex from John Moores University, and are now renting it back to them, having not been able to do anything with the site in, as usual, these economic climes.

Check out the article, and let me know what you think. The Maghull Group have some awful practice behind them, and don’t take lightly to criticism.

Is Liverpool experiencing the ‘wrong type of change’? And what do you think of the Lime Street gateway? The buildings there were indeed an eyesore, but has Liverpool lost some hidden gems as the bookshops and greasy spoons of this world get moved on? Or are we freer now to admire some of the greatest Victorian architecture Europe has to offer? Are these little shops opening elsewhere? Comment is, after all, free.

Liverpool Rebranding, and have your say in the Lime Street debate

Liverpool is no longer seen as being part of ‘the north’ – rather it has carved out irs own niche as a unique place, alongside places such as Edinburgh. To capitalise on this turnaround in its image and reputation, and in the light of Capital of Culture 08, a ยฃ150,000 branding exercise will see a new post-08 logo being plastered over a fly-over near you. You can also wear it on a sticker or a pin badge. The Liverpool Echo has details of the research and branding.

Artist's impression of Lime Street Gateway development

Artist's impression of Lime Street Gateway development

Liverpool has had its fair share of new skyscrapers in the past few years. Now the steel and glass replacement for Concourse House is no longer on the cards a debate is growing over whether Lime Street looks better or worse without a tall building on its frontage. More of fewer tall buildings in the city centre? The tower discussion goes on at Liverpool.com