£8.2m for stalled Merseyside schemes
LIVERPOOL is to commit £8m to help kick-start a number of stalled property developments.
The city’s cabinet will meet today to approve the allocation of loans worth £8.2m from the Growing Places fund to nine Merseyside schemes.
These include £1.5m for a hotel conversion of the old Martins Bank building in Water Street, £1m for the expansion of the Tratos cabling factory in Knowsley, and £1m for the Stonebridge Cross warehouse development which has been linked to online retailer Amazon.
The other schemes are: £1m for the remediation of the 40-acre former Bayer site in Halton; £1.5m for warehouse facilities at Hornhouse Lane, Knowsley; £500,000 at Johnsons Lane, Halton to unlock land; £800,000 for the Knowsley Rail Freight Terminal; £500,000 for Venture Fields in Halton; and £365,000 for Ocean Plaza managed workspace in the Wirral.
Liverpool-based Castlewood Property Management secured planning permission to turn the 11-storey Martins Bank building into a 138-bed, five-star hotel three years ago. Castlewood’s intentions were criticised by architectural groups for “inappropriate” changes to the Herbert Rowse-designed building which is considered to be one of the city’s finest examples of inter-war architecture. But since planning approval no work has taken place at the site.
