100 years ago, St Peter’s Church was the focal point of Church Street in the centre of Liverpool.
Today, little more than an engraved paving stone bearing a cross points to the presence of the former landmark.
After the church's demolition in 1922, Woolworths department store was built on the site.
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That site is now the Keys Court Entrance to Liverpool ONE shopping centre.
The flagship store of the entrance, Topshop, has followed the fate of its predecessor and remains boarded up after closing last year.
The history of such a small stretch of road shows how Liverpool’s high street has always been in a state of flux.
But more recently, its makeup looks to be changing all together and the future direction of this pivotal part of the city is uncertain.
The decline of the high street is a recurring motif of the last decade.
A series of big names have shut up shop and left an even bigger hole to fill in towns, cities and communities across the country.
While 2019 was a “particularly good year” for Liverpool city centre according to Business Improvement District (BID) Chief Executive Bill Addy, there were already signs of growth slowing down - only to be worsened by the pandemic.
Mr Addy told the ECHO: “What we've seen post lockdown is recovery. Retail is slowly coming back.
“For a retailer to be successful [these days], they need an experiential offer. People need a reason to come.
“If you look back over the 800 years of Liverpool, the city has changed to reflect society.
“The high street needs to constantly do that and we've seen those changes before."
While vacant space and closed up shops in Liverpool’s main shopping district would point to the challenging climate retail has faced over the last decade, it’s also starting to reflect a new direction Liverpool’s high street and wider city centre may be heading - one with a higher proportion of leisure offerings and the ‘experiences’ Mr Addy refers to.
Already this year Liverpool City Council has given the green light to a go-kart attraction taking over the upstairs floor of the vacant Debenhams department store in Liverpool ONE.
Plans have been submitted to convert the basement of the former Next store into a bingo hall, while there are hopes of turning The Lyceum on Bold Street into a mini-golf course.
Venture further up 'the spine' of Liverpool's core retail district, as Mr Addy puts it, and you can view these leisure and experiential changes are already in place at Castle Street, Liverpool’s historic business district.
The area is fast expanding its evening and night time offer with a growing number of bars and restaurants - with new hotels also in the pipeline.
There’s now even a cocktail bar and shooting range hybrid venue on offer.
Point Blank Shooting opened on Castle Street in September 2021.
It’s owner, Mark Rushden, told the ECHO how the venture has been a huge success and can have days where it takes more money than its sites in Manchester and Newcastle combined.
He added: “It's the Instagram generation now - they don't necessarily want to sit and drink all day.
“They want to be somewhere, they want to do something, they want to put it all over their socials and say 'look where we are'.
“We've managed to jump into a sector that is experiencing a boost with the end of [lockdown]."
'Dire need for office space'
Recently, a Hooters restaurant was controversially given the go-ahead to open a premises nearby in the former New Zealand House on Water Street.
The licensing application prompted plenty of debate about the type of venues the city centre may want or need - but in the end the council found no licensing reasons to turn it down.
For some, there is a concern that too much of the city centre is being given over to a party-destination vibe, catering to stag and hen events - particularly in the former banking districts of Castle Street and Water Street.
But it isn't all one way traffic.
Plans to convert the former Martin’s Bank into a mixture of commercial and grade A office space are coming to fruition and are set to be completed by 2024.
The project is being led by investment company Kinrise who see the future of the high street as a blend of culture, leisure and business opportunities.
Kinrise’s co-founder Samuel Lawson Johnson told the ECHO: “Liverpool has a dire need for quality, Grade A office space.
“(The lack of it) has meant that the city has lost some really good businesses and it's missed out on a lot of inward investment.
“We can accommodate a social entrepreneur taking a desk by day right through to a global company taking a 20 year lease.
“This won’t just be a normal office building. It’ll be more culturally engaged, active and interesting.
“What we believe we're doing is drawing the centre of the business district back into the centre next to the town hall.”
Leisure and hospitality remain crucial
Around the corner from Castle Street, the former Debenhams department store signals the start of Liverpool ONE - where the new go-kart attraction will be based.
In 2008, Liverpool ONE was a key symbol of Liverpool city centre’s regeneration but it has not been immune to the difficult climate the high street has since faced.
The departure of Debenhams has left a vast space to be filled, but it has also provided an opportunity to reimagine a more sustainable future as retail and the city centre changes.
According to Iain Finlayson, estate director at Liverpool ONE, the shopping centre has managed to buck the national trend of high street decline in terms of its sales figures (up 11.5% in 2019 despite a 15.5% drop off in footfall compared to the same period).
However the picture is not completely rosy.
Mr Finlayson added: "The big challenges we face is that we can't talk about Liverpool in isolation. At Liverpool ONE we have so many national brands.
"If a brand fails nationally, it fails in Liverpool.
"A great example of that is Debenhams which traded extraordinarily well in Liverpool, as did Topshop.
"But because the retail picture across the rest of the country was shaky, it pulls Liverpool down.
"Leisure and hospitality is going to be big going forward as people want to have those interactions that they've been deprived of for the last couple of years."
He pointed out that Liverpool One has had to be agile and adaptable, with its hospitality offer increasing from just eight outlets to 48 over the 14 years since its inception.
But where Liverpool ONE has one landlord and can curate its offer based on consumer and brand research, an equally complimentary landscape may not be as easy to achieve across the city when landlords are battling to secure the best possible returns.
Mr Finlayson added: "The wider city centre is made up of many different landlords and so there may not be a strategic approach because they will look at the quality of offer that they are getting as an individual landlord.
"[If those offers are increasingly leisure], it could be hard to turn back from."
It’s the process of managing this patchwork of units with different landlords that Liverpool needs to be mindful of, according to central ward Cllr Nick Small.
He told the ECHO: “Change is inevitable. What I'd like to see is everyone working together so that we can start shaping that change rather than just reacting to it.”
He adds that there has been some “frustration” around some of the new proposals and that there hasn’t always been strategic thinking about how the centre of Liverpool is changing.
Cllr Small said: “I've not been against the bingo idea, but if that's what the future of Church street is going to be then it's not going to be a success.
“Just look at London Road - once a main retail area of Liverpool, but it's been in a managed decline.
“The Fabric District helped bring that back but it's taken 30 years to find its feet.
“We’ve got to be thinking about the difficult things now and looking at what future trends are going to be in 5/10/20 years time.
"I don't want to be in a position where we've gone through managed decline [in the centre] and we're having to look at reinventing everything again.”
Looking to the east
London Road is an interesting and fascinating area to reference when looking at the future of Liverpool's city centre.
For some time now, this area, which connects directly to the city's most famous gateway, hasn't really felt part of the city centre at all.
This once bustling street and the areas that surround it have a remarkable history at the heart of the Liverpool's famous textiles industry and rag trade.
Many in the city will have fond memories of venturing to one of London Road's 27 pubs, two cinemas, market or the iconic TJ Hughes building.
More recently the area has fallen into disrepair and has not enjoyed the fruits of the renaissance that the rest of the city centre has experienced - with crime, antisocial behaviour and the lack of a coherent community all factors in this decline.
But things are changing in an area which connects key parts of the city centre to some of the Liverpool's most vital institutions like the Royal Liverpool Hospital (old and new), the city's university campuses and the emerging Paddington Village innovation district that includes the new Spine Building, the home of the Royal College of Physicians.
In 2017, a group of business figures, residents and interested parties got together to form the Fabric District Community Interest Company with the aim of creating a new vision that would attract creative new businesses, new leisure and hospitality opportunities and, importantly, a new atmosphere.
Richard Jennions is a board member of the CIC and works for his family company Try and Lilly, a specialist headware manufacturer that has existed in the Fabric District since 1864.
He said: "The Fabric District is this geographical puzzle piece that connects really important assets for the city.
"You've got the cultural and tourist hub on William Brown Street, the main train station at Lime Street and then all the educational assets and the scientific institutions at the top, they all border on the Fabric District.
"We join all those things up and I feel like we can create a brilliant counterpoint to all that institutional stuff, a flexible creative, soulful space where people can work, play and try new things.
"There is a solid community of businesses that have been here for a long time, but there is lots of space that is either under-used or has the potential to bring in new economic activity."
As well as attracting new business and improving the atmosphere of the Fabric District, one of the CIC's key aims is to reconnect the city centre with north Liverpool.
Mr Jennions added: "If you look at Everton, which in parts is very deprived, its been practically cut off from the city centre by the Islington dual carriageway.
"London Road is supposed to be their local centre, people do come, but it could be so much more."
One practical way the CIC is already working on this is creating a green trail connecting St John's Gardens with Everton Park.
Mr Jennions added: "This is a huge swathe of the city centre, where you currently can't really walk through it and we want to change that."
Upper central
This idea of connecting the city centre with the Liverpool's crucial Knowledge Quarter of university campuses, hospitals and science and innovation spaces is a huge priority for Liverpool City Council.
The local authority is expected to soon come forward with more detailed plans for its vision for an Upper Central area of the city centre, that it hopes can become a £2 billion gateway to the city centre.
The district would cover 56 acres of the city centre, running from Liverpool Central Station to Liverpool Science Park and to Lime Street and Bold Street.
Other exciting ideas include a potential new public square outside the Adelphi Hotel and a potential light rail or trackless tram network to link up the various areas within the Upper Central District.
Councillor Sarah Doyle, the council's cabinet member for Development and Economy said: "The future of the Knowledge Quarter is absolutely fundamental to our economic success – and its role as a catalyst in stimulating business is very similar to what we needed Liverpool ONE to do for our retail offer.
“The past decade has seen the city council, together with our academic and other public sector partners, invest a huge amount of time, energy and money in positioning KQ Liverpool as a major innovation centre. That strategy is beginning to pay dividends with schemes such as Paddington Village attracting new stakeholders to the city like the Royal College of Physicians, but we cannot afford to let the momentum slide."
In terms of Upper Central, the council is about to appoint consultants to enhance master planning work for the area, which will look at its connection to the Fabric District and the improvements needed above and beyond what is already taking place around Lime Street.
Cllr Doyle added: "When you arrive at Lime Street today, you go down the hill for the city centre. In future, you’ll have a choice between downhill for retail and uphill for innovation. That’s the goal.
“Central to all this is how we improve the public realm and movement as Liverpool’s greatest asset is that its city centre is so compact and walkable – and the human experience needs to be at the heart of our growth."
In terms of the future of the city centre, the cabinet member said the coming years will be transformational.
She said: “We’re expanding the city centre. Whether it’s north to Bramley Moore Dock, east to the Knowledge Quarter or south past the Baltic, the city centre in 20 years’ time will be larger and much better connected.
“The energy, excitement and momentum these will all create in our knowledge, creative and construction sectors, the social value and opportunities for local people that it will bring, as well as the transformational impact to their neighbouring areas, be it Ten Streets, the Baltic and the Fabric District and the communities around them, are going to change the face of Liverpool in a way we haven’t seen for a very long time."
