Posted by Ian on 7/14/2008, 10:50 am
I like this web site and it is a good insight into what we should be doing with the docks. More people should be aware of what we have and that it is worth keeping and valuable. I would like to see Toxteth and Harrington Docks excavated and the commercial units removed to a better location with good road access. Small boats could then get right down the docks again. Excavating those two docks is a simple matter as the quays and bollards are still in place. Edge Hill is a good place for a new commercial centre for the businesses. Some of those businesses are way too big for that dock location with heavy trucks running in and out and far too near houses as well.
It seems excavating the Herculaneum Dock is too late, although I wouldn't mind those corpy looking flats built on the dock being demolished and the water exposed again. sadly, I don't think that would happen.
I was walking around the Kings Dock the other day. I was not impressed and all looks a rather ill thought out mismatch when put against the magnificent Albert Dock next door. So much dock water has been filled in, when walking around the complex you don't feel as if you are in a docks area, while at Albert Dock you have that impression everywhere. Those new buildings are going to look tatty as they don't look built well enough to cope with Mersey winds and salt spay. I would expect after 10 years the whole complex to look tatty and run down. I now go along with the view that the area should have been built on the Dock road side of Kings and Queens Docks now I have had time to look around. The artists impressions made this plan look good and I was sold, until I saw what they did. My view is that the original branch docks should have been left alone and building matching the Albert Dock extended onto them.
The new Liverpool 1 shopping centre would have been magnificent if a canal was cut from Canning Dock, through the filled in Old Dock and a boat basin in the centre of the shopping complex, partially using the historic Old Dock. We should be bringing water back amongst us not filling it in. Liverpool 1 could be any shopping centre anywhere in the world. A boat basin in the middle would make it special, a great attraction and add to the maritime flavour of our city.
This site exposes lost opportunities, lack of vision, contempt for our maritime past, poor planning and poor construction. The city needs more web sites like this. Yes I agree, Liverpool can become an Amsterdam as much is still left and much can be reclaimed by excavating old water spaces as the Dutch are doing. Will it happen? If the city continues on its current meandering, aimless course I doubt it. We can all dream I suppose.
Rant Over. Got it off my chest. 
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