Liverpool City Council seeks development partner for Festival Gardens waterfront site where up to 1,000 new homes could be built. Tony McDonough reports
Liverpool City Council is ready to push on with plans for up to 1,000 new homes at the Festival Gardens site on the waterfront.
A report to the city’s cabinet on Tuesday, September 10, will recommend the authority embarks on a competitive procurement exercise to appoint a development partner to lead on creating a new neighbourhood in the south end.
In August 2023 a new green space, Southern Grasslands, was opened as part of the £50m remediation of the site. In 1984, more than 3m people flocked to the location for the International Garden Festival.
However, for the last few years attempts to bring the site back to life have led to a number of false dawns. In April 2023 LBN revealed that plans to build 1,500 new homes may be scaled back to around 800. That figure is now believed to be closer to 1,000.
Now there is a renewed ambition to significantly boost the city’s housing supply with a diverse range and mix of housing types, including affordable properties, together with local amenities.
This is a flagship project outlined in the city’s draft housing strategy, will connect with and enhance its natural surroundings and biodiversity and provide a high standard of “desirable and multi-generational living”.
Remediation and enabling works were recently completed in January 2024 to enable development, and since that time a team of experts have been curating a development brief which will provide an essential framework to market the site.
If the report is given the green light, the initial phase of the procurement process will begin in October, with a view to securing a partner towards the middle of next year.
Remediating the Festival Gardens site has been a three-year project, which began in 2021. It was a mammoth excavation programme, moving almost 450,000 cubic metres of soil and waste of which more than 95% was recycled.
This 28-acre site includes a unique 8-acre area of landscaped amenity space, with the other 20 acres now primed and ready for development. The remediation was led by the Council’s principal contractor VINCI Building.
Works were made possible through a combination of Liverpool City Council, Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and Homes England grant funding.
Leader of Liverpool City Council, Liam Robinson, said: “This is a major milestone in the evolution of the Festival Gardens site.
“The appointment of a development partner will see the completion of the International Garden Festival initiative and marks the final chapter in a 40-year story of a site which originally covered 250 acres.
“It will also ensure that the UK’s only remaining Festival Gardens are preserved and enhanced for future generations to enjoy.”