First up is the Walton Group, which has an option to buy Chavasse Park, situated directly inland from Albert Dock. Walton's architects, the American veteran Philip Johnson and Yorkshire avant-garde practice Studio Baad, have updated the mall as a futurist, freeform megastructure that would snake and swoop over the shops with a giant mouth that opens off Chavasse Park.
The second developer, Grosvenor Henderson, has rejected the mall and the megastructure outright, reverting to a traditional grid of open streets flanked by shops and peppered with restaurants and pubs, cinemas, a health club, a hotel and 307 homes. Drawn up by masterplanner Building Design Partnership, the scheme would conserve and infill 17 ha of existing streets that stretch inland from Chavasse Park and contain a mix of gap sites and obsolete and listed buildings.
For the sensitive infill sites next to listed buildings, Grosvenor Henderson has brought in four architects noted for their imaginative design in historical settings – Jeremy Dixon.Edward Jones and Haworth Tompkins from London, Page & Park from Glasgow and Brock Carmichael from Liverpool. While taking cues from the surrounding streetscape, all four architects are designing with a contemporary integrity that is the antithesis of the pseudo-traditional styling beloved of retail developers. Larger buildings planned around Chavasse Park have been commissioned from international signature architects Cesar Pelli, Robert Vignoli and Terry Farrell.
Another innovation by Grosvenor Henderson has been to encourage the designs to evolve in a series of, to date, five open workshops with city planners and the local community.
Grosvenor was appointed developer in March 2000 by Liverpool City Council and Liverpool Vision, the city's regeneration corporation. However, the Walton Group claims it has a contractual obligation from the council going back to 1996 and has taken the case to the High Court. The judgment is expected later this month, with a public planning inquiry in November.
Though more spectacular, the Walton Group scheme was panned by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, which last September damned it as "a hermetic self-contained world with little to connect it with the rest of the city".
In contrast, the Grosvenor Henderson scheme extends the city centre with a sustainable combination of open streets, architectural variety and mix of uses, bringing the shopping centre into line with the urban renaissance agenda.
