Jonathan Schofield on ambitious plans on a very very tight budget
John Moffat, joint managing director of property company Capital & Centric, surveys the scene of the mighty former Littlewoods headquarters off Edge Lane in Liverpool and says: "It's a colossal site, a kilometre round the perimeter walls of the building, 260,000 sq ft of space. The length is 220 metres which is longer than many residential streets."
The £70m estimate doesn't seem a lot given the huge site and the ambitious plans
The 1938 Art Deco building designed by Gerald de Courcey Fraser, abandoned in 2003, is now being stripped back to a point from which repurposing can begin. This initial phase is costing £17m of Liverpool City Region's money.
The idea is to create a magnet for production and broadcasting.
Moffat says: "Film and TV is good for Merseyside's economy delivering £45m a year. It’s projected when we're finished here there will be a £200m contribution to the economy as this will provide the purpose-built interior shooting space which the city currently lacks."
The refurbished building will host offices and technical facilities, set construction, indeed, everything needed to create TV and film in an area which is already the most filmed outside London. The idea is to make it the new scheme as flexible as possible. Adjacent to the building, to the east two 20,000 sq ft state of the art studios will be constructed.
The architects for the project are Liverpool's ShedKM who are used to big refurb and re-use projects such as Matchworks in Speke and the former Colgate Factory in Salford. The landscape architects will be Altrincham's PlanitIE.
Planning permission is now in with the city council so Capital & Centric are looking for a contractor to partner them as the scheme moves forward.
The most spectacular part of the present structure is the magnificent 'hangar' built in the sixties as a canteen and recreation area (main picture). This will become the public-facing part of the project with a screening and performance area plus a food hall.
To the north of the hangar there will be a courtyard gardens including 'a film strip' and boxes built into the public realm. Moffat calls this a ‘Scouse Walk of Fame’ with stars of the big screen and small screen from Liverpool and Merseyside providing a nod to the illustrious heritage of the city in this field.
One thing that was noticeably missing on our walk around the site was the famous tower. This had been a loved Liverpool landmark.
Moffat tells us: "The tower had to come down. We had laser sensors installed and it was moving. It’s ok for a tower to move if it moves back into place but this wasn’t doing that so it was at risk of collapse."
It's not been easy since Capital & Centric took over the site, especially with with an arson attack almost six years.
Was that the reason the tower had to come down?
"There were multiple factors," says Moffat, "but the arson attack didn’t help as the heat reached 1000 degrees."
The good news is that the tower will return with the new plans complete with roof terraces.
So how much will it cost to finish the job?
Moffat says: "We will know how much is needed when the building is stripped back. We're thinking around £70m. We know the challenges these types of buildings present. We are on site with nine live projects and many of those are repurposing old buildings. We’re well aware of the challenges and this building has already thrown curveballs such as the tower which we hadn’t anticipated would have to come down and then have to be rebuilt again."
Steve Rotheram, the Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, tells us how a building of this visionary magnitude will benefit UK PLC generally and how the city needs to plug the viability gap with a "cast iron business case to present to Rachel Reeves".
In other words he wants government cash at a time when the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, keeps hammering home there's no slack at the Treasury.
As for the £70m estimate that doesn't seem a lot given the huge site and the ambitious plans. Publicly funded cultural projects have an unfortunate reputation for going way over budget.
Down the East Lancs road, Factory International at Aviva Studios leapt from an initial budget of £110m to an eye watering £242m.
Is it possible to deliver what Rotheram calls "the Hollywood of the North" for just over a quarter of that sum on a site which must be at least five times bigger? That seems optimistic. In the extreme.
Moffat says on our site visit: "At its peak 16m pools forms were being processed every week by 3-4,000 women on proper wages manually checking the forms. It was a huge economic driver for this area of Liverpool and the loss of those jobs contributed to decline. If we get this right, the project here is earmarked to produce 4,000 jobs."
Here's hoping, but there's a long way to go and a lot of ifs and buts.
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