Mr McNamee thinks there is enough private activity to justify him starting work on three more waterfront office blocks. Swiss Life, an insurance company, is moving its offices from Crosby, just outside the Liverpool boundary, to Albert Dock in the centre, to cope with a workforce expansion from 350 to 500 people. But there are signs of private-sector interest too. First, much of the rise in office rents is attributable to public sector organisations such as the Criminal Records Bureau and the Employment Service competing for space. There are three question marks over this good news. This is about 40% below Manchester prices but is a big leap for Liverpool. Mark McNamee, chief executive of the Princes Dock Development Company, recently managed to secure a £15 per square foot rent for a waterfront office, the first speculative new-build office accommodation in the city for 25 years, he says. This new environment appears to be encouraging a commercial revival. “We take 90% of all decisions within five days,” Mr Storey boasts.
But under Mike Storey, the Lib Dem council leader, and David Henshaw, a new chief executive, efficiency and being pro-business have become priorities. Local businesspeople say the disappearance of the local anti-business political culture pre-dated the election in 1999 of a Liberal Democrat administration to Liverpool City Council. Two new four-star hotels have opened in the last two years, the first such hotels to be built in the city since 1972, catering for visiting business executives, who previously shunned Liverpool hotels for Chester and Southport, 20 miles away. Now young professional people are following-city-centre resident numbers (excluding students) have tripled from 3,000 in 1997 to more than 9,000 now.īut it also seems that people with money to invest have begun to be persuaded that Merseyside is moving out of the shadow cast by decades of industrial and political militancy. In Liverpool, the trend was sparked by an influx of students to new central flats built by the city's three universities. To some extent, Liverpool is simply catching up on the current fashion for city-centre living. The Prem Group, a Dublin-based hotel and apartment company, has recently taken out a three-year lease on 30 Liverpool flats. Irish corporate money is sniffing around too. Mr McGlashan sold a flat for £58,000 two years ago which is now on the market at £100,000.
John McGlashan, chief executive of the Beetham Organisation, says he knows of one Irishman who is borrowing £30m of mortgage money a year and buying flats in Liverpool by the dozen. Taxes levied in Britain on property-purchasers, at 3% on properties priced between £250,000 and £500,000, are minimal compared with Irish taxes of 15% on similarly priced homes. Most sold for between £150,000 and £350,000, and one penthouse made nearly £500,000.ĭevelopers reckon that about a quarter of these new flats are being bought for investment reasons. Out of a dismal former council office block, the Beetham Organisation, a local construction firm, produced 45 flats. On the waterfront, prices are higher still. The smallest flats in Mr Bolton's development start at £85,000, but the penthouses cost from £180,000. Paul Bolton, chief executive of the Charlton Group, a north-west building firm, says that of 115 flats still under construction in an old parcels warehouse, 100 have been sold.Īnd, by Liverpool standards, they are not cheap either. Old warehouses, factories and offices are being converted into smart blocks of flats complete with obligatory swish penthouses. The city centre, much of which has lain derelict for a decade or more, is alive with construction activity. This time they are rich, and are helping to fuel a property boom. Since then, the city has fallen on hard times.
IN VICTORIAN times, poor Irish immigrants flooded into Liverpool to work in the city's docks and factories, helping many Liverpudlian businessmen to grow rich.
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