A new advisory group could be set up to shape the future of Liverpool’s waterfront

A new advisory group should be established to help define the future development of Liverpool’s iconic waterfront, helping to provide a voice and input for local businesses, stakeholders, experts, voluntary sector, community representatives to ensure it stays true to a shared vision. This is one of the suggestions within a Liverpool BID Company commissioned positioning paper, to be launched today, aiming to define a framework and guiding principles for any future development and evolution of the iconic site.

With a new masterplan underway for the next 10 to 15 years, major developments at Bramley Moore Dock and festival gardens, as well as the significant changes at Royal Albert Dock, King’s Dock, museums and galleries, Liverpool’s waterfront is in a period of continued regeneration. Attracting millions of visitors each year, along with a growing residential population, the waterfront is widely acknowledged to be the jewel in the city’s crown.

The new vision for Liverpool’s waterfront, set out in the Liverpool Waterfront Positioning Paper is based on several months of interviews with those who manage key sites along the waterfront, those who live and work there, invest and want to develop. The vision is intended to act as a guide for future development, to provide a framework for decision making, and to shape the storytelling and offer of the city’s most iconic site to help attract investment and stimulate growth.

Commissioned by Liverpool BID Company, it calls for a unifying vision to provide a framework for any future work, to provide a coherent strategy and approach. The advisory group, made up of stakeholders, experts, voluntary sector, community representatives would act as a driving force for the vision, encouraging conversation and communication with the community, advocates and promotion, lead on partnerships and evaluate strategic development, monitor and evaluate progress.

It includes six guiding principles including a need to preserve and reflect the heritage of Liveprool’s world class waterfront, ensuring that future development integrates with the existing fabric while celebrating Liverpool’s sense of place. That the waterfront creates a year round offer, creating playful and engaging cultural experiences in the public realm, encouraging performance and music, creating a stage for artistic expression, to balance the need for individual reflection at the waterfront, and sense of communal celebration, continuing its ability to adapt to changing times.

Bill Addy, CEO of Liverpool BID Company, says,

“Given its global iconic significance, the Liverpool waterfront needs to be governed and managed in a more coherent way to ensure the quality of the development is high enough in future. And a more strategic, long term view needs to be taken of the whole area which stretches several miles from the huge opportunity of the original International Garden Festival site in the south, through the Royal Albert Dock Liverpool area in the centre to the north docks and Liverpool Waters up to the development of Everton football stadium at Bramley Moore Dock.”

The Liverpool BID Company has commissioned the Liverpool Waterfront Positioning Paper (LWPP) to capture the views of businesses and organisations with existing assets and active regeneration projects along the waterfront. The intention being that the LWPP marks a new way of working together and provides a framework for future discussion and collaboration.

Find more information on the Liverpool BID website.

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