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Project Jennifer | Great Homer Street | 67,000 sq. ft. Sainsbury’s/Other Retail/Community Facilities

170K views 748 replies 78 participants last post by  Tommo85 
#1 ·
Project Jennifer regeneration of Great Homer Street in Liverpool moves step closer as developer hunts for tenants



DEVELOPER St Modwen says it is a step nearer to bringing new life to Great Homer Street as it today started hunting tenants for new shops on the historic street.

St Modwen’s plans for a £150m regeneration of the street, dubbed Project Jennifer, went to a public inquiry in July and the Government is set to give its verdict shortly.

But St Modwen’s regional director Michelle Taylor told the ECHO she was optimistic the scheme would get the go-ahead.

And at the British Council of Shopping Centres annual convention in Liverpool, which starts today, St Modwen plans to speak to retailers interested in moving in to the new “large retail units” in Great Home Street opposite Project Jennifer’s flagship Sainsbury’s superstore.

Ms Taylor said the public inquiry, which focused on the compulsory purchase orders (CPOs) St Modwen needs for the scheme to go ahead, lasted just a day and a half, rather than the 12 days that had been predicted.

Sitting in front of a stand adorned with giant artist’s impressions of the Great Homer Street scheme, Ms Taylor said: “Today we are launching that 90,000sqft of retail space. We’ve not been able to market it before.

“We’ve been to this event for the two previous years. We’ve been talking to retailers about Great Homer Street, but at that time it seemed so far ahead because we were still going through the CPO process.

“This year we are stepping it up a notch. Project director Paul Batho and I are meeting various retailers with our agents.”

Mr Batho added: “We will be talking to them about the benefits of being located next to Liverpool’s biggest food store.”

Ms Taylor would not reveal the names of the companies she would be talking to in Liverpool.

But she said: “We are looking to the likes of Boots, Argos, and WH Smith.

“It’s very much about convenience. People will look to this centre for their everyday needs.”

Read More http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/2012...ts-for-tenants-100252-31805779/#ixzz26ivGoe4y

£150 million of investment - up to 1,000 new jobs

The regeneration of Great Homer Street will create:

Liverpool’s largest food store
90,000 sq ft of new shops
New market facilities
New homes
Huge improvements to the local environment
A health centre
A transport interchange
900 free car parking spaces and a petrol filling station
Improved links to Everton Park where further exciting proposals are being drawn up
http://www.greathomerstreet.co.uk/
 
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#128 ·
#129 ·
Drove past the site earlier. They really have tonked the buggery out of the whole area. It's like the Israeli government have decided a 12 year old boy threw some stones at them and levelled it with missiles.

It is good to see so much work on site, even if it is a mess right now. At least now it's a mess with a purpose, rather than just a mess.
 
#130 ·
Yeah, big progress over the last couple of weeks with most of the old industrial estate now pulled down. Virtually everything gone from the Scottie side and a few buildings left on the Greaty side.

It looked like they were digging some big trenches on site too, maybe for service installations.

There's also a separate little site for a new electricity sub-station (that's half-built) on Scottie next to the old butchers.
 
#134 ·
I'd also like to see the Derby picture house knocked down, and it's pity that there's a factory between the site of the new market and Scotland Road because it would open it up from the other side. I'd like to see flats built over the road as well on the site of the old 'Honky Tonk'. Not that I ever drank there.

Flats with street level shops would look good as infill on this stretch of road.
 
#142 ·
Rumour has it on Seven Streets that McDonalds are to open at Project Jennifer. Have a read for yourself. I can't help but dislike the tone of the patronising articles on the Seven Streets website of late:

http://www.sevenstreets.com/north-liverpool-stuff-the-poor/

There will be no library or health centre. In my opinion libraries are fast becoming things of the past. Although North Liverpool statistically is one of the poorest areas in the city, if not country, do not be fooled that every single kid will have an iPad, kindle fire and whatever else. It's not Ethiopia.

Health centre provision for what isn't a large population is also surely adequate with Vauxhall Health Centre, Stanley Road health centre, Everton Road health centre and any others I haven't mentioned.

There's a McDonalds on Aigburth Road, Speke retail park, Halewood and wherever else in South Liverpool. I think the article reeks of pure patronisation.

A McDonalds will be ideal for parents who are shopping with there kids, as a treat, rather than a place where they eat on the daily. It will also create jobs that the no skilled local people can actually take up. A library and health centre isn't going to sustain many jobs for local people. Maybe a couple of receptionists and dispensing technicians who earn a couple of quid more than those working at McDonalds.

There needs to be some perspective on this. The Vauxhall / Everton area has been crying out for a retail centre for years upon years. If signing McDonalds up to take a unit makes it more economically viable then so be it.

However, according to the article, all of the kids at Notre Dame will then get obese and die at the age of 17.
 
#144 ·
SevenStreets used to be a good, interesting blog with a valid perspective. Over the last year or so it's become unbelievably sneery and cynical about everything. It's been down on Project Jennifer ever since it got planning permission, dismissing its regeneration potential and constantly banging on about the market moving as though it's been razed to the ground and the earth salted. Even their restaurant reviews are filled with disdain now. I'm not sure what happened but it's unfortunate.

If a Health Centre and Library were promised, then they should be built. They were part of the proposal and what the community agreed to. But I don't think a McDonalds means the end of the world.
 
#145 ·
It was never that great tbh beyond its role as a listing guide. Anything 'hipstery' going on would be covered and as I assume anyone opening anything hispstery would email, PM, tweet, etc., the blog about it. The opinion pieces are as good as one guy, David Lloyd, who seems to write everything on the site, seems to be at that moment. A major problem is that the guy doesn't seem to like Liverpool very much. By that I don't mean what he might think people mean by that. That is, 'how dare you slag off the giants, we scousers love them' (yes, we've had them at least once too often already) and similar. It's that he gives the impression that the thinks he likes, Camp + Furnace type stuff, are something not of Liverpool and some arl girl belting out kareoke numbers on the Dock road is. Liverpool along with everywhere else in the world isn't majority young, trendy, boho, hipstery or whatever but always has had more than its fair share of that type of stuff. And what's more not planted in from elsewhere or in pathetic homage to crap towns like London (itself abjectly copying whatever someone's seen on a cheap city break in New York), although Liverpool can copy like anywhere else, but of a homegrown and peculiarly Liverpudlian character. Always has had from the jazz age, through to the heyday of the arts school, Adrien Henry in what we are now to call Canning and Rog McGough in Sefton park, both notable music explosions and on to the present day. There is always something offbeat and 'boho' going on, even when the city has been flat in its back otherwise and always something odd and specifically Liverpool about the scene question.

This weakness leads to whenever a single closure happens to something edgy, and by its very nature fragile in any city propering or otherwise, such as Mello Mello choosing to put itself out of business or the Kazimier garden being threatened by development around it, another trolling, click baiting piece from Seven Streets appears opining how this proves that the whole city is lost to hen parties and tat. While everywhere in the world small, alternative businesses pushing through that flags of derelict districts like beautiful unexpected and shortlived weeds find themselves pushed out when places regenerate. Only to appear elsewhere of course.

It's a pity because the city needs website covering all the good stuff going down here (and there is a lot somehow or another despite how the city and its region is structurally disadvantaged by the country in which it is trapped - see the utter bollox of today's government funded 'City Growth Report for an example) and the councils here need holding to account also. Lacking much of a local media at all nowadays there needs to be someone taking on Joe and Co. Sometimes David Lloyd gets it partly right but there is nearly always a bum note sounded somehow, a betrayal of a lack of comprehension of the city his website aims to be covering and worse than that a lack of sympathy. Unlike those boho hobos of decades past I've been talking about there is something not 'of' the city about the blog that jars to often for me to ever think it is a decent voice for or reflection of Liverpool, while all the time the things it focusses on - craft beer joints, artsy venues, this month's fashion for hipster fodder - is the the sort of sh1t I'm into. I should like the site but I don't...
 
#146 ·
I noticed, for the first time, last week, just how many people go to McDonald's for breakfast. I was driving along Wapping ( a.m) - and there were queues at the drive-through.....

Seven Streets is just the personal, opinionated blog of one bloke....It provides no obvious social service or function. Liverpool Confidential is better.
 
#148 · (Edited)
Yes its main (only?) man is now chewing on a whole different project with his Bitten magazine, which is based in Manchester. When that goes t-up he may be back however. Slag off SS we can but the problem remains is that there isn't anything much better out there. Bido Lito is good on music at least (and I am very pleasantly surprised it keeps going, especially in print form). What else though?
 
#151 ·
Work starts on St Modwen's £150m Project Jennifer scheme

Work began this afternoon on Great Homer Street’s £150m Project Jennifer scheme.

Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson was among guests for the ground breaking ceremony at the site today.

It signalled the start of work, and the end of more than 10 years of planning by developer St Modwen.

The scheme, which is being delivered by St Modwen in partnership with Liverpool council, will create more than 1,000 jobs.

As well as an 110,000 sq ft Sainsbury’s supermarket, the project will bring 80,000 sq ft of retail, 900 free customer car parking spaces, a petrol station and homes.

Major road improvements will be made, including a new junction linking Scotland Road to Great Homer Street and improved links to Everton Park.

The new ‘Greaty’ market facility opened its doors in Dryden Street last month as part of the scheme.

[...]

St Modwen began enabling works at the site earlier this year, preparing the site for development, including the rerouting of utilities for the area and the demolition of some buildings on the site.

Sainsbury’s will begin development of its store in summer 2015, with opening expected to take place during summer 2016.

The retail units on the eastern side of the scheme will also open during summer 2016.
Article continues at - http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/business/work-starts-st-modwens-150m-8096038
 
#153 ·
^^

From an architectural or design point-of-view, there is likely to be little to write home about. That's not to say it will be bad, and it will certainly be an improvement on what is there now, just that it will likely be a bit generic.

However the importance placed on this project stems from the fact that this area (amongst some others, predominantly in the north of the city) almost or totally missed out on the regeneration that various parts of the city saw, not just during the boom years, but also for years before. In other words, this area has been waiting a long time for its turn. A much-improved built environment, better community shops and facilities, improved access, new housing, an upgraded park, and numerous jobs are all coming. All of these will help to bring this area back to being a place people want to live, work, and visit, rather than generally being forgotten, only remembered as people pass through to somewhere else.

Regeneration in the city centre is great, but the regeneration, where needed, of our suburbs must not be forgotten, and it's with great satisfaction that this project is finally coming to fruition.
 
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