Liverpool Football Club announced last week that it’s working together partnership with the city council and local Housing Associations to Regenerate Anfield. What that actually means is a board (mayor, boss of LFC, boss of the housing association) imposing Compulsory Purchases on local residents, and then creating profits for businesses. The football club will have more seats, so they make more money, the city’s £50 million will get spent on building business premises, in order to cash in on the space created by the demolitions, and individual people, little families, will be removed like moles under a pristine turf.
Now, I could swear and shout and curse and wave the protest flag at you. I could scream that LFC is betraying the “you’ll never walk alone” ethos by sending another tranche of residents to start new lives far away from their community. But I won’t. I am personally, probably, safe from the CPOs (compulsory purchase orders), being one street away, on the “nice” side of the stadium. I am personally, probably, not going to be affected. I have no real reason to be horrified.
So let’s talk about the things I should be chuffed about as a local home-owner, whose home isn’t going to be stolen from me and bulldozed.
The mayor is a big fan of Enterprise and businesses. So this new generation of Regeneration will include a Training Hotel, with the name Hilton attached, if our local councillor is to be believed. And there will be businesses – restaurants, shops, cafes, bars. It will be a veritable Aladin’s Cave of ways to spend money. there will probably be a Starbucks, a Macdonald’s, a Wetherspoons, a Tescos Express.
The part of me I’m keeping quiet in this blog is screaming in horror at this. But the middle class home-owner in me thinks “well, it’ll add a few K to my house price.” It’ll bring money into Anfield. It’ll make Anfield look and feel more affluent. It’ll Gentrify the area. instead of tinned up houses with litter and broken street lights, we’ll have bright new bricks and glass and BOGOF offers.
It genuinely will mean that standards will improve. Tescos have set opening hours, they don’t shut early on a whim. Wetherspoons don’t sell counterfeit vodka that is dangerous and illegal. Starbucks don’t make instant coffee with a dirty spoon. As residents we deserve that.
But as residents, we are all in this together. When the big name chains move in, and drag standards up, what they’ll do is destroy the things that make small businesses lovely. Ok so they might shut early if they’re bored, but the petrol station always rounds down the few pence that people go over. The local offlicenses are a bit hairy when it comes to the really cheap stuff, but they always keep an eye on the kids hanging around outside. The corner shop might sell stuff past its sell-by-date occasionally, but they regularly shepherd the escapees back to the old folks’ home for dementia sufferers. Will these independent businesses up their game enough to compete in the premier league?
