In May, following a visit by the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh, the first phase of the 42.5-acre, £1 billion Liverpool One was opened, which saw 200,000 people return to the city centre. The biggest downtown regeneration project in Europe, Grosvenor's Liverpool One is a mixed-use scheme based around four distinct shopping streets and a redeveloped park and bus station. Information services company Experian expects the city, currently ranked 15th in UK shopping locations, to move into the top six within nine years mainly as a result of the new infrastructure.
Rather than a giant indoor shopping mall, Liverpool One - in an area bordered by Church Street, Lord Street, the Strand and Hanover Street - comprises a number of iconic buildings and retail units, anchored by new John Lewis and Debenhams department stores and linked by open-air streets or boulevards, largely based on the existing street plan. The 160 shops are joined by 625 apartments, many of them built on top of the retail outlets, together with a 14-screen Odeon cinema, a Hilton and Novotel, 20 catering outlets, surrounding a 2,000-bay car park which will be entirely covered by the five-acre redevelopment of the old Chavasse Park. There are two further car parks providing another 1,000 spaces.
The development incorporates a total of 30 buildings; including renovated, derelict historic buildings and some new builds. The whole area will be linked by walkway to the redeveloped Albert Dock waterfront, currently cut off from the rest of the city centre. Several new names to Liverpool are setting up home, most notably Debenhams (which will have the retailer's largest men's department outside London) but including Urban Outfitters, Radley and American Apparel. Top Shop will have its biggest outlet outside the capital.
Key to Liverpool One's appeal will be the separate character of its shopping streets. "Different parts will have their own atmosphere and retail mix," says Grosvenor's project director Rod Holmes. The areas form an arc from east to west, starting with Hanover Street, which is adjacent to the hip Ropeworks quarter, a centre of Liverpool's new media industry and nightlife. Adapting many of the original conservation area buildings with large glass frontages, the units are pitched primarily at furniture and household goods stores.
Next to Hanover Street is Peter's Lane, which will be Liverpool One's fashion quarter. With streets arranged into small squares as well as an indoor arcade, the emphasis is on upmarket architecture and designer stores including Jigsaw, Ghost, Reiss, Ted Baker and Karen Millen. One building, Peter's Arcade, provides bronze-clad shopfronts, designed by Jeremy Dixon of Dixon Jones, the architects behind the refurbished Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. The challenge, says Dixon, was to "reflect the realities of contemporary retail practice in relation to a historic urban form", giving rise to features such as double-height, bow-windowed frontages "lit by a dramatic vault that gives a mysterious quality to the daylight". One of the adjacent squares is clad with dark, polished, reflective granite.
Moving west, Paradise Street - running north to south - is the development's main boulevard. Pedestrianised, with pavement cafés, two storey shops, the cinema and John Lewis at the southern end, it is home to a number of big-name retailers such as USC, Nike, Apple, American Apparel and Cult. Some of the buildings are new, topped by apartments with a top "attic" level with recessed balconies.
Finally, South John Street will be the flagship retail area. Open air but on two levels with covered walkways and linking Debenhams with John Lewis (which is 40% bigger than its previous store in Liverpool), where it meets Paradise Street, South John Street also contains many high street, mid-market fashion and children's brands, including Zara, Pull and Bear as well as the Disney Store and a Liverpool FC outlet. Fashion retailers in the quarter include Republic, Oasis, Warehouse, All Saints and Esprit.
On the western end of the development, the terraced Chavasse Park is described as a "large scale, dramatic urban set piece", with views of and links to the waterfront and the bus station and overlooked by One Park West, a 17-storey block comprising 326 apartments designed by architect Cesar Pelli. The building is due to be completed next year.
No fewer than 26 leading firms of architects worked on Liverpool One, including Brock Carmichael, Haworth Tompkins and Glenn Howells. Using practices from outside the retail arena was crucial in giving the development its eclectic feel, says Holmes. "Until the end of the 1990s retail developments used a few architects who specialised in shopping centres. We have moved on from this by contracting mainstream architects who have had little or no experience of retail. This helps to give the city a variety of buildings which gives the place the feel that it has grown over time," he says.
Empathy with the area's heritage was also vital. Although much of the locality knocked down to make way for Liverpool One was derelict or unappealing, it also contained many listed buildings, one of the highest concentrations outside London and including Bluecoat Chambers. That is partly why being as true as possible to the existing streetscape - including the scale of buildings and width of the streets - as well as retaining existing views of landmark buildings was important. Says Holmes: "We have retained the street pattern by putting the new buildings on the street plan and have used a sensitive palette of materials." We also encouraged the use of local materials including limestone and red sandstone.
The city's fathers are confident that Liverpool One - together with some smaller-scale but important retail developments in the wider city centre - will be the catalyst to help Liverpool regain its status as one of the UK's great destination cities. Councillor Mike Storey, the city council's executive member for regeneration, uses an apt metaphor to describe Liverpool's fortunes in the retail market, which have seen it fall behind cities such as Leeds, Cardiff, Newcastle and Edinburgh. "In footballing terms, we were hovering above the relegation zone. Soon we will be challenging for a Champions League place," he says. "But we will not be satisfied with that. We want to get into the top three or four and make Liverpool the choice for shoppers."