Garden festival site wins approval from minister
_tcm81-128411.jpg "Artist's impressions of how the former Liverpool Garden Festival site will look with refurbished parkland and new housing")
Following a lengthy planning inquiry which ended in January 2008, Communities Secretary Hazel Blears has approved planning permission previously granted by the City Council for a scheme that will transform the city's former International Garden Festival Site into a mixture of parkland and new housing.
The £250million scheme, which includes 1,306 apartments and 66 town houses, will also see refurbishment of 56 acres of the parkland, including the long-awaited restoration of the Japanese and Chinese Gardens. It will be built by a partnership between developers Langtree and McLean, both of whom have delivered successful regeneration schemes in the city over the last decade.
However, delays caused by the public inquiry and the current credit crunch may mean that work will not start immediately, and could be dalyed for up to 18 months.
John Downes, managing director of Langtree said:
"This decision follows four years of hard work culminating in more than 100 consultation events, over 6,500 man-hours and a considerable financial investment.
"Our immediate priority is to deliver a high quality park for the people of Liverpool as promised. Our next step will be to hold discussions with our partners to devise a realistic timescale for bringing this scheme forward.
"Obviously, no-one is immune to the current market conditions, but there will always be a market for high-quality residential schemes in prime locations, and we believe in the quality of our product."
Council leader Warren Bradley said:
"The plans will ensure the site is once again an asset the city can be proud of. The people have wanted it for so long, and that's people from the community and the people of the city."
(Originally published 11 July 2008)