Knowledge Quarter to ‘double planned investment’ to £2bn

LIVERPOOL will today unveil ambitious plans that could double the investment in its knowledge quarter to £2bn.

The city will utilise the heightened interest in property investment opportunities in the regions created by exhibition MIPIM UK, which is being held in London this week, to set out some of the details.

The official launch of Knowledge Quarter Liverpool will contain a package of announcements centred around innovation, education and health that includes plans for a new railway station.

Previous plans have aggregated ongoing investments in this area of the city at £1bn, and include the Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, Liverpool Life Sciences Accelerator, Materials Innovation Factory and Sensor City.

But today’s announcements double that amount in the five-year plan it sets out.

“What we are doing in the Knowledge Quarter, which is from Lime Street right the way up the hill, we are using imagination to apply that knowledge,” said Colin Sinclair, chief executive of KQ Liverpool.

“There is a £1bn investment. The Paddington Village site which we will launch [on Thursday] is another £1bn of investment.”

Paddington Village is a 1.8m sq ft health, education science and residential development space on the site of the former Archbishop Blanch school.

Sinclair, the former chief executive of Manchester’s inward investment agency MIDAS, added: “We have a simple plan, which is to build on the existing academic, medical, scientific and cultural brilliance that already exists, to create a world-class innovation district at the heart of a great city region.

He spoke to an audience of property professionals at MIPIM UK yesterday, alongside Liverpool City Council leader Ged Fitzgerald, about the opportunities and attractiveness in the city.

The three-day conference is the domestic sibling to the international property event held each year in Cannes, France.

He referenced the University of Liverpool as being in the top 1% in the world and the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and LIPA as other institutions with international reputations. The Knowledge Quarter counts the city’s two largest universities, Royal Liverpool University Hospital, Liverpool Science Park among its assets.

Across the city, on the waterfront, there is also major progress being made in enhancing the city’s international offer.

Sinclair said the city has “got itself back on the global map”.

He added: “Yesterday there was an Indian company about to sign a huge MoU [memorandum of understanding] in the city, there was an American company here, and we were discussing where we would find space for a Chinese investor.”

Next week the £400m deep-water container terminal, Liverpool2, will open at the Port of Liverpool. The Peel Ports development will be able to welcome post-Panamax vessels – so-called because they are wider than the original Panama canal, which has since been expanded – and which have capacity for more than twice the cargo.

Fitzgerald said: “Last week the port could take 5% of the world’s trade, next week it will be able to handle 95% of the world’s trade. The container terminal is a private investment but we are incredibly supportive of that.”

He also looked ahead to a potential waterfront site for Everton’s new stadium, which is one of two sites in the city under consideration, adding it “could be a £300m centrepiece at that end of the river”.

The council has been assured by Whitehall that it is “business as usual” for the Northern Powerhouse, despite a summer wobble.

Fitzgerald said: “We are clearer on the Northern Powerhouse agenda than we are the post-Brexit agenda. It did go quiet and we did have to nudge the ministerial team and the civil servants, who went into slumber mode.

“We have been assured that it is business as usual. There are plans being worked up.

“The strategy needs a few tweaks post-Brexit. The product range, the offering, the showcases, across the Northern Powerhouse is still there.”