It is 130 years since a new football stadium opened in the city of Liverpool.
After rent disputes at Anfield, Everton moved across Stanley Park and set up shop at the newly-built Goodison Park in 1892. That same year, Liverpool FC were founded and made Everton's former home their own.
The two clubs have remained in their respective grounds since. As the years have gone on, Liverpool have worked to expand their stadium, with the Anfield Road stand currently being redeveloped to take the ground's capacity above 60,000.
READ MORE: Life after Everton for match day hub on County Road
However, Everton have not been able to do the same in more recent times and moving away from Goodison has been on the club's agenda since the 1990s. After plans to move to proposed new stadia at King's Dock and Kirkby did not materialise, the club settled on Bramley-Moore Dock as their preferred site in 2017.
Everton were given government permission to proceed with plans for a £500m new stadium with a 52,888 capacity in March 2021. The Blues are set to move into the stadium in the Northern Docks at the start of the 2024/25 season.
Ground was broken on the site in August 2021 and progress has been steady since. The most recent update from the club stated the piling is complete and foundations are in place for above-ground works to commence across the site.
In moving to the Northern Docks, Everton have picked an area in the midst of change and recovery. Liverpool's decline as a port saw industry diminish in the 1970s and allowed the docks to fall into a semi-derelict state. So-called early adopters have brought their hospitality venues and other businesses to the area in more recent years, as former warehouses and other industrial buildings were converted into flats and hotels.
The Northern Docks are part of the £5bn Liverpool Waters regeneration scheme, which spans from the city centre and aims to "bring life back to Liverpool's historic docklands" through office space, accommodation, hotels and a cruise liner ferry terminal.
Featuring within the scheme, the new Everton stadium is the largest project of its type in northern England.
The club's arrival at Bramley-Moore will have wide-ranging ramifications for the area. Come 2024, the Northern Docks will be the first part of Liverpool to have to learn to live with, and adapt for, football in well over a century.
To see what this means, the ECHO went to Bramley-Moore to speak to residents and businesses about Everton's impending arrival.
Addressing 'neglect'
Sans Cafe has served Chinese food on Lightbody Street - a stone's throw from Bramley-Moore dock - for over 40 years. Staff there told the ECHO that they feel investment in the area has been a long time coming.
The cafe's chef Lin said that, when she began working there, she served plenty of dockers and industrial workers, but those sales have fallen by the wayside. These days, it relies on passing trade.
Despite that, Lin is not thinking so much about the new stadium in terms of business at Sans, but is hoping that it beckons in a new era for the area, which she said has been "neglected for years and years."
Everton have said that the new stadium will drive regeneration in North Liverpool. The Bramley-Moore development and the Goodison Park Legacy Project are estimated to deliver a £1.3bn boost to the economy, create more than 15,000 jobs and attract 1.4m new visitors to the city.
Writing in a blog on the club's website in February, Colin Chong - Everton 's stadium development director - said: "This is the best site and the only site for Everton Football Club’s new stadium. It will be the place-making project for North Liverpool and the amount of regeneration it is going to spur, from central Liverpool, all the way north, is going to be astronomical."
Michael Parkinson, a professor at the University of Liverpool, who has looked at how Liverpool has changed over the past 50 years told the ECHO earlier this year that a lack of investment and regeneration in North Liverpool was a "stain on the city's conscience", but viewed the stadium development as a positive step.
He added: “The great thing about North Liverpool is there's great need in moral terms that something should be done. But actually there is also massive opportunity on the waterfront.
“Bramley-Moore isn't necessarily a football stadium, it's an economic lever. We have to understand the significance of that.
"It's more than a football stadium. It's something much more fundamental to the next two decades of the city, because that's where the action is going to be.”
Riccardo Borfido, who runs Caffè Riccardo at Make CIC's Northern Docks site on Regent Street, hopes this will mean greater visibility for businesses in the area. Like Lin, he feels the area had been neglected, telling the ECHO that where his shop's outside tables now stand was just "rocks and bricks" when he arrived.
He thinks the area is now moving in the right direction. He said: "When I set up, it was just me and the Invisible Wind Factory. Now when you look around there are many places, which is a good thing."
Riccardo hopes that the new stadium inspires more food and drink venues to set up in the area, but he wishes for quality of venue over quantity, which may not prove to be the case when there are 50,000 customers to serve every other week.
The visibility afforded to the area once Everton arrive will be invaluable, he added. Riccardo said: "There are still people saying I didn't know about this, I didn't know you were here". He doesn't think that will be the case for much longer.
Adapting to matchdays
Liam Kelly is chief executive officer of Make CIC, which supports creative start-ups across Merseyside. One of the Northern Docks' early adopters, Make has been on Regent Street since 2015.
Liam told the ECHO that he has already witnessed plenty of change in the Northern Docks since he arrived. He said: " In the time between then and now, the stadium is well underway. There have been a handful of mainly music venues that have opened. Some have opened and closed in that time."
He expects the Everton stadium to change the area once again, but thinks that this may come at a cost for existing businesses. He said: " I think the area will adapt to being part of a matchday economy, but there are plenty of people there who don’t want anything to do with being a matchday economy. There is industrial, as an example, and various other endeavours that will only be inconvenienced by 50,000 people.
" It’s an obvious point to say that the area will accommodate a matchday experience. Somebody will either set up something that doesn’t already exist, or somebody who is here will adapt to accommodate that. That’s a given and it’s a great opportunity."
However, he added: "One of the country’s biggest metal recycling plants is down here in the docks, I’m not sure that they would be overly happy that Everton are building a stadium a couple of hundred yards away from them."
A local resident, who didn't wish to be named, also pointed out that the area might not be a perfect fit for football, though he added that the new stadium would hopefully bring more pubs and business to an area which he felt "always has been neglected".
Just up Regent Road from the new stadium is the United Utilities Waste Water Treatment plant. Pointing to that, the man said: "The smell's horrendous, whether people would want to be eating pies out in that, I'm not sure".
As the ECHO walks on, the air certainly is thick with the smell of the remaining industry - and that United Utilities plant. It's a long way from that familiar matchday scent of beer and chips that wafts down County Road every other Saturday.
The waiting game
On March 26, 2021, Everton found out that they could proceed with the planning application for their new stadium, as the government decided not to intervene. A day later, the Bramley Moore pub tweeted a screenshot of Everton's CGI mock up of the proposed stadium from above, with a circle around their venue, just spitting distance away.
The tweet read: "If you're not familiar with our pub we are situated here". Once Everton arrive, their pub will be in a prime location, as around 50,000 people descend on Regent Road every fortnight.
However, for now, footfall along the road is low, while cars and heavy vehicles speed between the city centre and North Liverpool. A number of local residents that spoke to the ECHO said they thought the pub will have to fight through the next couple of years until football crowds arrive in 2024.
Similarly, Riccardo said that he felt pubs and bars that are already in the area will be playing a waiting game until they can rely on matchday footfall.
Joseph Vaughan, who opened The Royal Crest Hotel on Regent Road in December 2021, is playing that game. In January, he told the ECHO : “The plan for the first three years is just to keep going until the ground is there.
“Common sense tells you that this is going to be a good investment, but you can have the best car in the world and it can still crash “There's no passing trade currently, so you're basically just trying to stay in as long as you can and hold out.
"You've got to be lucky and you've got to put the effort in. You've got to survive.”
With the exception of the Bramley Moore and The Royal Crest, the hospitality venues currently in the vicinity of the dock - like Ten Streets Social and the Invisible Wind Factory - are not particularly what would be considered matchday venues.
In comparison, County Road and the area around Goodison Park is populated with takeaways and 'traditional' pubs such as The Brick, The Black Horse and The Royal Oak. As such, it would not be a shock if the new stadium leads to more pubs and takeaways of that ilk arriving around Bramley-Moore.
However, Liam believes that setting up venues associated with matchday economy around Bramley-Moore might not be so straightforward, nor is he expecting a carbon copy of what's seen around Goodison.
He said: " What’s available in the North Docks is land and vacant warehousing buildings. You can’t bang a Nabzy’s takeaway in the North Docks but you could turn a derelict piece of land into a fan park."
Liam thinks there must be an approach beyond an idea of "if you build it, they will come". He added: " There’s plenty of land available between Old Hall Street and the new Everton stadium but we want development to be done in a well-managed, orderly way."
He added: " From our perspective, there is an opportunity to support the early adopters and that opportunity is now.
"It takes people to define a place, not buildings. Those people are already there and there is an opportunity to work together now."
