WILL NEW STADIUM LIFE INTO NEGLECTED NORTH?

High hopes that Blues' new home will bring a change to once-thriving dockland

- By DAN HAYGARTH ECHO Reporter

It is hoped that Everton’s new 52,769-seater stadium, which will host its first competitive match today as the Blues face Brighton, will be the catalyst for change. Construction of Hill Dickinson Stadium commenced in 2021 and it has found a new use for the semi-derelict dock.

Northern Docks into new neighbour-hoods, is ongoing with a new park and housing development planned at Central Dock and a cluster of skyscrapers to be built at the King Edward Triangle on Gibraltar Row, at the edge of the city centre.

That project, backed by Home Bargains’ Tom Morris and Beetham’s Hugh Frost, aims to build the new tallest building in Liverpool.

Meanwhile, a proposed New Town development known as Liverpool North could see 10,000 homes built north of the city centre, across Everton, Anfield and Kirkdale and into Bootle. It is vital this delivers meaningful change for the north of the city, according to University of Liverpool professor Michael Parkinson, left, 81, who has been chronicling the change in the city’s fortunes since the 1980s. He is an ambassador for the university's Heseltine Institute, which aims to lead debate around and create solutions to urban challenges.

Professor Parkinson’s work saw him chart Liverpool's postwar struggles to the nadir of the 1980s.

But his 2019 book ‘Beyond the Brink’ looked at its recovery in the 1990s and 2000s. He told the ECHO this renaissance was focused on the city centre and its southern area, from which North Liverpool did not benefit.

He hopes the new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock can correct that, saying: "North Liverpool was an area we neglected for a long time. We fixed the city centre, fixed the south but didn’t do the north.

“Now you have real evidence that people have realised that there's a challenge and an opportunity. The next decade will need to see the north get some of the benefits that some of the other parts of the city have got.