All quiet on the Greaty front as Project Jennifer is hacked back

IT was hailed as a flagship project for north Liverpool, so important that even the institution that was Great Homer Street market had to be turfed out.

But Project Jennifer is shrinking in size and next week Liverpool’s planning committee is being recommended to give the nod to a smaller version of the grand plans. 

The original plans, spanning more than 114,000 sq ft, envisaged one of the area’s largest Sainsbury’s supermarkets as well as shops and businesses in what would have been a new "town centre" for the Scotland Road area, complete with health centre. But Last October it emerged that a question mark was hanging over that too, its development being dependent on NHS funding.

In the meantime, "Greaty" market, held for decades along the main street where it attracted thousands of bargain hunters, was controversially shunted into a new site down the road, in Dryden Street, sparking a bitter row between the traders and Liverpool City Council.

Read: Priced out of the market 

Sainsbury’s has confirmed it now intends to build a much smaller, ground-level anchor store on the site, just under 46,000 square feet compared to the collossal store on stilts it had originally planned spanning over one and a half acres at 68,000 sq feet.
 

It means the store is shrinking by over 22,500 sq feet. Even the car park will be smaller, creating space for 463 vehicles against the planned 715, a loss of 252 spaces.  A row of retail units has been slightly reduced in size in the revised plans, but will still extend for 21,000 sq ft.

Work on Jennifer ought by now to be well under way, especially as most of the site has been prepared to make way for an army of builders and apprentices. The demolition of the Great Homer Street Local Centre was supposed to herald a transformation of the area with a £150m spending spree.

But taking a stroll along Great Homer Street today there was little sign of it yet. The levelled site earmarked for the Sainsbury's development was surrounded by hoardings but otherwise silent, and on the vast swathe of land opposite, where once stood St Anthony's Indoor Market, was parked a solitary, empty digger.

A solitary digger stands empty on the levelled site today, with St Anthony's church, on Scotland Road, one of the only recognisable features left on the landscape 

The plan as envisaged on hoardings around the site

The whole Project Jennifer had been created to copy in North Liverpool what the earlier Project Rosemary had done for the area around the new Royal, the university and Edge Hill.

Read: Great Homer Street Row Could Scupper Entire Project

The new Sainsbury’s store is to be located to the south of the application site and immediately west of Wilcock Close and on to Great Homer Street. The area of land directly to the south fronting Chapel Gardens would be the area for future commercial development envisaged by the original Project Jennifer masterplan.

Before: The famous Greaty Market in January 2014. It was shunted off the site to Dryden Street in a bitter row between the council and traders

After: Two years on and all is quiet on Great Homer Street 

The northern part of the site will accommodate the retail units and the petrol filling station with the area in between laid out as car parking. The  supermarket will also have a gas powered combined heat and power plant which has been assessed in terms of potential impact, but both the Environmental Health Manager and Head of Planning conclude there would be no harmful impact on nearby residents. 

The new home of Great Homer Street Market down the road in Dryden Street

In a report to the committee the council’s head of planning says that although the overall area of retail floorspace has been reduced, particularly within the main food store, he does not consider this would prejudice the creation of a new district centre.

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