A twice-stalled 31-storey £50m residential tower in Liverpool Waters is back on track as developer X1 agrees to take it on. Tony McDonough reports
Liverpool developer X1 is to take over the £50m Patagonia Place in Liverpool Waters after a previous developer pulled out on two occasions.
In March last year LBN exclusively revealed that Your Housing Group (YHG) was pulling out of the project to build the 278-apartment scheme. YHG had originally pulled out in 2018 before getting back on board.
Now Peel L&P, owners of the site, will hope it will be third time lucky for Patagonia Place. X1 will team up with construction firm Vermont to deliver the project. The pair have already delivered several schemes together in Liverpool and Manchester.
In an interview with LBN in October 2022, Vermont founder Chris Connor revealed the development would soon be back on track.
Patagonia Place will sit alongside Moda Living’s £82m, 34-storey skyscraper, the Lexington, and the £21m 16-storey Plaza 1821, built by the Regenda Group. Both have been completed in the past couple of years.
It will also sit next to No 1 Princes Dock, a residential block that was completed more than a decade ago.
Chris Capes, director of development at Peel L&P’s Liverpool Waters, said: “With planning already approved by Liverpool City Council and a world-renowned residential developer at the helm, we are delighted that the development of Patagonia Place can now proceed full steam ahead.
“Patagonia Place is a high-quality proposition, and will be yet another incredible residential development for Princes Dock.
“It will create more quality homes that meet the needs of the local market and will secure local jobs and investment in an enviable waterfront location and we look forward to bringing the development forward as planned.”
Originally called Hive City Docks, the original development for the site was designed by Brock Carmichael.
It secured planning consent in 2017 and groundworks began in 2018 but, by the end of the summer of that year, all work had ground to a halt with no explanation.
This was followed by a period when neither YHG nor Peel L&P would make any comment on the future of the development. In June 2019, YHG responded to a query from a Twitter user about the development, saying “…we’re afraid Hive no longer exists”.
YHG secured fresh consent for Patagonia Place in October 2020. The name is a nod to the port’s historic links to Patagonia. It was from Liverpool in the 19th century that 153 Welsh people set sail for a new life in South America.