Liverpool looks to redesign St George’s Gateway

There’s some slight irony in this, in that many years ago they had some really fantastic gateway schemes designed for the immediate area to the train station and they were knocked back (with lesser designs going on to replace them).

Excellent news. Lime St north requires re-integration to the city centre and Lime St east needs significant public realm works etc. Fabric District CIC consulted on the latter last year.

So this proposal involves disused buildings, vacant plots, transport, and public realm, covering lots of bases then.
William Brown St at present is more or less dead after 7pm but could become more lively if we had an inner city tram network part of which ran down London Rd then in front of the art gallery and library,then along Old Haymarket and onto Dale St.
This would serve the hospitals cluster, Lime St and the station, and onwards to the main downtown area. This would need vision and the enthusiasm to do something special to benefit not just the Lime St area but the rest of the city centre too.

So is this them having another go, following the last, fairly recent, hugely expensive and disruptive reorganisation of the “gateway” from Lime Street station, which amongst other things, has more or less eliminated direct bus access to the station, Empire Theatre and bottom of London Road, and left a nicely paved but really quite bleak and empty space instead?
And will the Sir Ken Dodd Memorial Giant Toilet Brush be back on the agenda?

Get rid on the student resi, the discount supermarket and bring back the futurist.

What major city has poor quality student towers and a DIY store next to its biggest transport hub?

Still alot of low density 80s housing around there breaking up any attempts at consistent (and appropriate) density

I would like to see the zip wire back!!

The area around the old flyover has been in a shocking state since it was demolished years ago. Wasteland, surface car parks, huge roads difficult to navigate on foot – all a 5 minute walk from Lime Street station. It really needs sorting out.

And please improve bus access to the north of the city centre. The last scheme totally cut off most buses from the Dale Street area.

I work as a tour guide and now that the bus lane is local buses only, it is impossible to drive tourists past St George’s Hall and along Lime St so we have to cut out this part of the city centre which seems a crying shame to me.

The Irony is The Steble Fountain Hasn’t Been Working For Years

@Anon 5.10pm, the new Unite student tower is not poor quality and it’s popular.
Meanwhile Lidl is not a discount supermarket and this brand is found all over Europe, finally regarding bringing back the Futurist can’t you see there’s a longtime, empty cinema across the road.

Fun fact – the 5 niches at either end of St George’s Hall were originally intended to house statues.
Wikipedia currently names 10 Diddy Men, so this would be the ideal opportunity to recognise their priceless and iconic contribution to local culture, and also keeping with the wider theme of putting up not very good statues everywhere, of people who will be forgotten quite soon.
LCC may put forward a counter-proposal of past Eurovision winners or Taylor Swift in 10 different poses, but this would clearly be a very silly thing to spend the local culture budget on.

About time

Good to plan and protect, add to the strengths of the area. But yet another plan suggests the council hasn’t been working to a plan with its multiple, multi-million pound “re-imaging” schemes we’ve seen already that have isolated the Lime St from at least half the city.

Even the buses that can access Lime St no longer stop outside the train station! London Rd though definitely needs some refreshing.

How about replacing that massive eyesore from 2008 that’s still wrapped around the other eyesore of St John’s Market and car park? It’s the first thing you see when you exit Lime Street Station and looks bloody awful. Some regeneration on London Road wouldn’t go amiss as this could area desperately needs some investment as it has been neglected for decades while other parts of the city centre have had massive amounts of money thrown at the them. It’s almost as if North Liverpool and Everton don’t count.

Councillors have been saying they have been developing a master plan for this key gateway, now we find they are only just starting….what’s been going on since the flyover was demolished 3 years ago ?

But it is a cunning plan.

Yes Nick 12.31pm, St John’s Centre frontage needs a massive re-think , that wraparound is not a good welcome, meanwhile the market hall is now empty but a bit of imagination might suggest it could be a Sports Hall with squash, badminton, and volleyball, I’m sure that would be a success. In addition the former Blacklers store would make a great continental style market on multi levels if those street bars were removed.

As usual all seems a little bit ‘siloed’ by LCC – appreciate that I may not understand and there are different budgets for different things – but echoed in the comments on this article is that this area is the gateway to the city – with some pretty decent buildings such as St George’s Hall, Walker Art Gallery, World Museum etc and St John’s Gardens. Yet there seems to be little nod to this and value of the area and how other cities do it. Sadly London Road is on a parr with Manchester’s Piccadilly – you get off the train and then it gets quite scary. Lime St, London Road and the tributaries to it around the station need sorting out and making user friendly and a show piece – not piece meal!

Please recommission our Fountain and develop London road x

Great opportunities for the area around the museums (flyover sites)! Could create a beautiful new square facing the west elevation of the World Museum, linking William Brown Street to Dale Street and creating a much more pedestrian friendly environment across Byrom Street. Also, land should be allocated behind the Walker for its future expansion. This is the national gallery of the North with the most important English collection outside London, but it’s not big enough to show the collection to its full extent. You could open up the Walker at the back, creating a much more welcoming ground floor, and linking it also to the old County Sessions House which already belongs to National Museums Liverpool.

The Lime St/ St Georges area should feel classy and metropolitan but its let down by so much garbage architecture surrounding Lime Street alot of it quite recent. Fixing the stable fountain would be a good start along with finding a developer for ABC cinema. Unite need to be persuaded to sell up their student commie blocks, the wrap and car park at St Johns needs to go also. A solution needs to be found to make the ION development a little less grotesque.

Chimney sweeps, bottle washers and wheel tappers Hurrah.
Lime Street a major traffic conduit for vehicles travelling from the North Liverpool area to South Liverpool area of former successful economic years. , will see more cyclie lanes and reduced carriageway capacity.

Once upon a time in my living memory through traffic from the Bootle and Walton Districts could travel from the Rotunda via Christian Street to the Flatiron junction for South Liverpool and South Docks.

The Saint George’s Hall was a symbol of Liverpool ‘s success as a major port and city. Now a place of travelling shows and ridiculous continental market stalls.
Rhubarb, rhubarb and more rhubarb.
Bah Humbug

The public needs a proper explanation and input, into any changes.

Get the buses to stop at lime street, Liverpool one and the water front so people can enjoy what the city has to offer instead of st John’s and then having to walk everywhere else. If you have mobility problems you can not get around the city centre

How many goes do they need to mess this up. LCC are an absolute disgrace

Let’s hope they don’t wrexk the present world class views sitting outside weatherspoons looking towards the arch splendour of the museums and St,George’s hall the Kings favourite neo classical British building. Also what’s going to happen to the forgotten Cinema on Lime St. Why couldn’t this work have been done on the last major reconstruction of Lime Street not so long ago. As a Community based planner I’ve argues for many years that local people should be included on dlreflective good design to inform heritage led development briefs. But of course falling on perma deaf ears is the norm ad infinitum.unfortunately here

Whilst doing all the designs perhaps cyclists could be required to actually ALL use the highly expensive cycle lanes in Lime street instead of pedestrians negotiating the vehicle and cycle lanes of lime St traffic then getting knocked down by a so called cyclist on lime St pavements. No enforcement here or rest of city WHY?

Waste of taxpayers money. Council borrowing money for stuff we don’t need right now

Instead of cobbles needs to b flat as not wheelchair friendly