Festival Gardens restoration completes
THE £4.5m restoration of Liverpool’s Festival Gardens has been completed.
Local residents were invited to a firework display at weekend to commemorate the completion of the gardens’ restoration was held at the weekend, although the 90-acre site is unlikely to be open to the public for another 4-6 weeks.
Work on the venue was delayed last year by the collapse of main contractor, Mayfield Construction, leaving developer Langtree and new contractor Tolent Construction to finalise the project and remedy a number of residual design issues created by Mayfield’s demise.
Langtree development director Stephen Barnes was joined by Cllr Malcolm Kennedy to welcome guests to Saturday’s event, the first and largest in a series of ‘ramp-up’ events being held to prepare it for public use.
Mr Barnes said: “It’s been a long road, with plenty of potholes along the way, but we are pleased and proud to say that we have now completed work on Festival Gardens.
“We felt it was important to mark the occasion properly and thank our neighbours for their consistent support and patience throughout the project. Each and every guest seemed genuinely impressed with what we’ve achieved, which is crucial as this park will be their legacy.
“This event was also essential to help us stress-test our work and ensure the park is robust enough for the people of the city to use for years to come.
Originally conceived as the centrepiece of Liverpool’s early regeneration efforts, the site was home to the International Garden Festival for five months in 1984, but a series of failed ownership changes saw it fall into significant disrepair during the following 27 years.
A second phase of the project will now begin that will see Langtree bringing forward up to 1,374 new homes on 25 acres in the park on the area of the former Festival Hall dome.
