Opportunity knocks
Stephen ayley
Last night I was at a reception in a spectacular architects' qffice at the giddy heights if a
bold, new slgscraper in one if the most beautiful downtowns in the world...
T
HERE was good modern furniture and quality carpet and
a hum of confident optimism. The men were in proper
suits and the women had a celebrity allure. We drank
superb South American wines and the sunshine beat down. The
water glistened enticingly and in the distance there were blue-purple
mountains. A shockingly huge, coruscatingly white cruise liner was
in the docks. Only glistening a little less than the river were all the
late-model German cars parked below.
Altogether, it was like a Hollywood fantasy of an architect's life.
I propped myself against a filing cabinet and spoke to a sleek
chairman type, all tan and teeth, big silk tie, a mane of gunmetal
hair and shoes with the kind of polish you only get if you are a soldier
or have someone to polish them for you. He, it turned-out, ran a
huge property corporation, responsible for some of the region's
most awe-inspiring buildings. So where was I? Santa Monica? Rio?
Bombay? Shanghai? No, actually, I was in Liverpool.
I was born in Wales and have lived most of my life in London,
but happened to go to school in Liverpool. And Scouse sentimen-
tality is infectious so, irrespective of the facts, I regard Merseyside as
home. I mention this only because when I was growing up there,
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just to say the word 'Liverpool' was to evoke a universe of dismay
and vileness and crime and poverty. The big threat when I was a
boy was of getting nutted by a truculent drunken mick or accosted
by shoeless beggarwomen or breaking your neck after sliding on a
pool of indigent's vomit. Today the big threat is getting your RS6
or C63 ticketed.
No one ever told me that Liverpool has a future. I was brought
up to believe that it only had a past and that it was soon going to be
reforested, de-populated and returned to Nature in a humbling
gesture acknowledging the futility of man's ambitions and vanities.
There's still a lot of vomit and vileness around, but in the past ten
years Liverpool has escaped an urban near-death experi-
ence and is, if not quite as confidendy and stylishly as
Florence circa 1430, busy having its own renaissance.
This homily about my schooldays is not merely more indulgent
autobiography, but a lesson to luxury businesses. My chums - the
£lacks, hacks, boosters, scribblers, posers, sketchers, fixers - who
inhabit the cosmopolis do not know Liverpool (or, say, Manchester,
Chester, Newcastle) exist. They ignore anywhere that is not
London. But here in the north-west are vigorous markets stiffly pop-
ulated by people with money to spend. And since property prices
are generally much lower than the south-east, the money they have
to spend is stored in much larger and more attractive piles.
Liverpool now has one of the largest shopping :malls
in Europe, all crisp new-build by serious architects in
the pay of the Duke of Westminster. On any night, the passeggiata on
the Ropewalks make via Condotti look like a quiet moment in the
cloisters of the Discalced Carmelites. But Liverpool and other
northern cities need better specialist goods and services.
The market is wide open and real. Myoid city of waifs and
beggars and drunks is disappearing, replaced by
wo:men in Dior who talk to BlackBerrys. Liverpool also has
one of the largest student populations in Europe with a specially
high proportion of Chinese: there's a special relationship here since
Liverpool had the first Chinatown. What's the least-exploited
brand on the planet, a product that commands worldwide respect,
but is pitiably under-valued? Liverpool Football Club. Just a
thought. Does anybody think they might be missing something?