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WHAT WE'RE TRYING TO STOP
Langtree McLean's plan is for a high-density 'urban' development of 1300 luxury flats on the Garden Festival Site and extending along the prom from the Britannia Arms. A major part of the development (460 of the flats in seven large apartment blocks each 8-storeys high) is planned to run along the waterfront in what has previously been officially designated as an 'undeveloped coastal zone'. By allowing flats to be built on this landmark part of Liverpool's 'green wedge ' the Council is undermining the already fragile market for apartments in the City Centre and in the suburbs. And because many social housing developments use apartments to cross-subsidise houses this scheme puts at risk projects to build the affordable homes Liverpool needs for ordinary families. Langtree McLean's plan is to dump excavated spoil from digging the foundations for the tall buildings involved in its scheme on the grassland areas of the site - to the south of the pumping station. The plan is for 80,000 cubic metres of excavated spoil to be dumped - that's the equivalent of 13,000 builders skips being tipped. The pollution problem is that the spoil will include a large quantity of landfill waste which underlies the Festival Gardens dating from the time when the site was a landfill rubbish tip. This waste contains all sorts of hazardous and toxic materials including asbestos. Disturbing and dumping this material will put people's health at risk. Thousands of mature trees are to be cut down to make way for the apartments, their waterfront views, and for the wide pathways planned for a park of 'lollipop' replacement trees and manicured lawns. The effect on birdlife will be catastrophic. Co-incidentally Langtree McLean's dumping plans will also destroy the last breeding ground for the skylark within Liverpool. Langtree McLean have been insistent that they be given the public land which currently provides the picnic area on the prom along from the Britannia Arms. Apparently it is needed for an essential 'access road' for construction equipment - and to allow the luxury apartments to be built so that they 'oversail' the people on the Prom. So far the Council (under public scrutiny ahead of elections) has managed to over-rule the developer's demands…but Town Hall insiders say that if the Langtree McLean plan goes ahead then it is only a matter of time before the public land makes its way into private hands. |
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| A comparison of the developed area in 1894 and that planned by Langtree McLean reveals just how much of the woodlands are to be lost - especially those along the riverfront. the remaining park is to given what is in fact a Costa del Sol condominium treatment - and looks to have more to do with providing brochure and video pictures to help sell the 1300 plus luxury waterfront apartments than to provide a public park. The council's planning committee seems to think that the City is getting a free park - when in fact Langtree McLean have just moved some marketing costs (just 2½ % of their investment) across to the public realm. The first drawback to this way of getting a public park is that the required manicured 'condo look' is expensive to produce - hence the £4 million price tag for the park redevelopment. But more importantly the condo look' will be difficult and costly to maintain. Langtree McLean are offering just £2 million as a one-off payment for all future maintenance. The real sting in the tail will come when this dowry proves sadly insufficient for the upkeep of all the fancy walkways and other brochure goodies - as indeed the planners have already been warned by CABE, the Government's expert commission on these sort of developments. That's when the City will have to face up to the real costs of its 'free' park - a threadbare embarrassment or a costly addition to its public space responsibilities. |
The Plan ignores the real traffic situation Traffic issues have always been a major problem for proposed developments to the Garden Festival Site. The 1999 consultation brief noted the inadequacy of this location for housing development due to the lack of an adequate infrastructure. Riverside Drive is already reaching its capacity limits with the current growth of traffic and it is difficult to see how adding to the problem with a major housing estate will do anything other than create gridlock. The plan proposes to get around this problem simply by ignoring the reality of the traffic situation and planning for the level of car-ownership, car parking etc. that the planners and the developers would prefer to see. The impact of the real level of car use will then fall on the surrounding streets and roads - as local residents in the nearby St. Michael's find the on-street parking outside their homes being taken up by cars belonging to residents from the garden festival site - to say nothing about visitors to the Japanese gardens. The result is a plan which is certainly far from transparent; for example the only indication that riverside drive will actually have to be redeveloped as a Dual carriage way comes on Page 139 of the Planning Manager's Assessment - hidden away under Cycling Provision. Altogether it is difficult to be happy with plans which seem to be based on traffic surveys which don't seem to add up especially in relation to developments such as John Lennon Airport, the Paradise Project and the Liverpool Arena and Conference Centre which are transforming traffic patterns in the City.
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davidmmorton@hotmail.com |