Festival Gardens to complete in the New Year

THE delayed restoration of Liverpool’s Festival Gardens will now be completed in the New Year.

Work on the 90-acre venue ground to a halt in July following the collapse of its Liverpool-based main contractor, Mayfield Construction.

This forced developer Langtree to find a replacement contractor to finish the project, but the firm picked to complete the work, Tolent, said it found a series of quality and design issues which required further remedial work.

“A precautionary survey of all Mayfield’s works revealed that some of it just isn’t up to the required design standards and the contractual terms that we agreed,” said Langtree managing director John Downes.

“There are some sub-standard works that are not acceptable.  We’ll only open the Festival Park to the people of Liverpool when I can be totally satisfied with the result.  If that means taking more time then we apologise but it’s better to be right first off – and I hope that people will agree with that approach and bear with us,” said Mr Downes.

He added that although “no single issue is particularly complex”, the number of faults found meant that it had taken some time to fix.

Once works are complete, a period of commissioning will take place to ensure the gardens can cope with the expected daily use.

“A key part of that process will be a series of ramp-up events, organised in conjunction with the The Land Trust, to give local residents, schoolchildren and other members of the community a chance to sample the gardens for themselves,” he said.

“After so long in the wilderness, the gardens are nearly there, but it’s important that we take enough time to get them absolutely right before their public debut.”

Originally conceived as the centre-piece 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 over the next 27 years.

Langtree’s restoration is part of a two-phase project which will see it working with residential developers to create up to 1,374 new homes on 25 acres located on the area of the former Festival Hall dome.