Liverpool ONE at 15: how a vibrant shopping and leisure destination can transform a local economy

Liverpool ONE, the groundbreaking retail and leisure scheme turned 15 this year, and to mark the occasion, property giant Grosvenor which co-created the scheme with Liverpool City Council commissioned a study to assess its impact on the local economy. The results reveal that since 2008 the scheme has contributed a massive £4.1bn in economic activity and played key role in a 24% growth in the value of Liverpool City Region’s visitor economy.

The completion of the 42-acre scheme was planned to co-incide with Liverpool being named the European Capital of Culture in 2008. It was always designed to be "very ambitious" Grosvenor's director of Liverpool ONE Chris Jukes tells TheIndustry.fashion, and he isn't wrong.

While the economic impact has been huge (as well as the £4.1 billion in economic activity, it has also contributed £1.9 billion to the Exchequer and £300 million in business rates), Liverpool ONE changed the face of the City, while also carrying off the tricky balancing act of blending harmoniously within it.

The site spans five areas including Paradise Street, South John Street, Peter’s Lane, Hanover Street and the Leisure Terrace facing Chavasse Park and was designed around the existing streets linking the Albert Docks – the commercial centre of the city – on one side and Lime Street Station and the pedestrian zones in between on the other side.

The site before its redevelopment

Today it is home to 170 stores, bars, restaurants and leisure experiences, and has become a destination of choice for any major fashion and beauty brand when they asses their UK store portfolio. The recent opening of a sparkly new Marks & Spencer, for instance, was seen as pivotal moment in the high street giant's renaissance.

That its 'prime location' status remains in place a decade and a half after it was launched is testament to the vision Grosvenor and Liverpool City Council shared before ground was broken and the commitment to maintaining standards ever since.

"Liverpool City Council at the time came up with a very big and bold masterplan to completely regenerate the heart of Liverpool City Centre but they knew they couldn't do it without a private partnership, so they went out to the market and Grosvenor was chosen because of its shared vision and also because it was an organisation that had a track record of creating something that had a lasting legacy," explains Grosvenor's Jukes.

Grosvenor and Liverpool City Council also correctly identified that a city with such a rich cultural and style heritage, and such a large population, was seriously punching below its weight when it came to being a shopping destination. "Liverpool was at that time languishing at number 17 in terms of retail sales in the country, even though its population size meant it should have been in the top 10.

"In terms of the masterplan it was very much not to build some sterile homogenous shopping centre with everything under one roof. The vision was very much to create something that works seamlessly with the rest of Liverpool and to create something that really stands the test of time that will be there for generations to come.

"We had to build something that worked for all parties; for civic and commercial parties and for the community. It was a revolutionary scheme, it wasn't just a shopping centre. There were 36 different building that are part of the scheme designed by 20 different architects. It was very, very intentional that it would look like something that was part of the city. We kept the existing street names so we maintained that history and the connectivity was so important. We worked with the existing topography and with Chavasse Park, which is now a Green Flag awarded park and a great outdoor amenity as well, but that's all very well and good but how do you keep it fresh and evolve it?" Jukes explains.

South John Street

As both the developer of the scheme and the manager, Grosvenor has worked hard to protect the asset ensuring its keeps across shopper trends, explores ways of drawing in visitors (of which there are 22 million per year) from wider areas, and of course keeping tenant mix front of mind, in terms of both leisure and retail. Retail has always been a driving force of change across all Grosvenor schemes but leisure has, in the post-pandemic era, become increasingly important as shoppers look for new methods of entertainment and socialising, along with their shopping (in particular in Liverpool which as the reputation of being the UK's "most sociable city").

A perfect example of this shift is the conversion of the former four storey Debenhams store into both the new M&S and a Gravity Max active and immersive entertainment venue, complete with go-kart racing and a bar. It's been a huge success in bringing in a new type of customer to the scheme and, with the bar, it brings in a night-time visitor also, says Jukes. "The knock-on impact for the rest of the scheme has been exactly what we want it to be with sales up across the board," says Jukes.

Since the pandemic, retail footfall across the UK has not quite recovered to 2019 levels but it has bounced back more strongly that might have been imagined. According to MRI Springboard, throughout the UK in September the gap from the pre-pandemic footfall level narrowed marginally to -10.9%.

Jukes says he is unsurprised by the appetite to return to physical stores across all socio-demographic groups. "There's no doubt that Covid accelerated the growth in online retail but since Covid that [online growth] has dropped back down and we are essentially back in large part to where we were before. For us, we've always known that purely physical retail would stand the test of time as people like to be social and to touch and feel things. Good high street done well continues to thrive. But it's the negative side that catches a lot of press attention, such as the high profile failures. For those managers and owners that invest in good quality retail – it's the same with any asset class – there will always be a place of for relevant, well-run, evolving high street and shopping destinations," he says.

An evolving offer is hugely important and Grosvenor constantly accesses data to see what is and isn't working now in the scheme and beyond and invests much effort in learning more about its shoppers and potential shoppers in the surrounding areas. This helps inform the tenant mix when both long- and short-term opportunities present themselves.

"It's not just the long-term tenants we think about, it's also the activations. There's only so much we can do when it comes to telling out long-term occupants what they could and should do but we do a lot of work when it comes to pop-ups and bringing something different. It might be someone trialling something or launching a new product. We are seeing more and more retailers who are exclusively online wanting a physical retail presence," Jukes says.

A recent example of this is menswear brand Arne which has twice popped-up at Liverpool ONE and ensure their success at the scheme by advertising their presence on social media and by taking over vast swathes of advertising boards across the city. That exercise brought customers into the scheme who might not have previously come and equally drove traffic to the Arne website, "it's not just one-way traffic", says Juke.

Arne aren't the only ones to use physical retail to drive traffic online and vice versa. More established retailers in the scheme have been integrating their stores into their omnichannel strategies for quite some time (click & collect being an obvious example) and the food and beverage brands have benefited hugely from the surge in delivery services such as Just Eats and Deliveroo.

"We help our occupiers use those channels and benefits from them and not try to fight it and we work with them in collaboration. We offer the best physical offer that we can and make sure that it complements their online activities too," Jukes says.

When it come to ensuing the best physical offer Liverpool ONE was always designed as several destinations within one enabling the scheme to be zoned so that like-minded brands can be housed in close proximity to attract the right level of customer.

"You have that sense that each area is different, it's not just the East Wing versus the West Wing. For example you have South John Street, which is open air, but it's covered open air so it has more of a mall feel to it, so you have a certain type of retailer that wants that shopping centre feel and that's where our highest footfall is.

"Then you have other areas, such as Peter's Lane, which is more of a premium lifestyle area with a different price point and perhaps a different customer, where you have Space NK, Sweaty Betty and Swarovski who have all opened next to each other," Jukes explains.

Shoppers take in the scenes

Marking the success of Liverpool ONE with the publication of the report and other events was important, says Jukes, because it helps stakeholders and the city to take stock and also enables Grosvenor to thank all the people who have been involved in its success.

"We hoped it would be a huge success, it has been a huge success and we want the next 15 years to be as successful. We published our report and are holding some celebratory events, largely just to thank people. This is not just something that Grosvenor has done or that Liverpool City Council has done," explains Jukes.

While looking back on the past 15 years, Grosvenor and Jukes have their eyes on the next 15 and what they want to achieve.

"[We want] to keep it fresh, to innovate, to enliven for all stakeholders to benefit, including the council our occupiers our customer and the wider Liverpool society in terms of what we do on the social side of things, which includes continuing to support the Liverpool ONE charities foundation to which we've given more than £3 million over the past 15 years.

"It's very important for us [to mark this milestone]. Place making and social impact have been the buzzwords for the last five to 10 years. But Grosvenor has always done that. We might not have called it placemaking or social impact but Grosvenor has always been about creating lasting legacies and impact and being stewards of an asset and that was one of the reasons why Grosvenor was chosen to be the developer in the first place. It is about creating places that people want to come to for generations to come."

Liverpool ONE's contribution since 2008:

• Generated £4.1bn in total Gross Value Added
• Contributed £1.9bn to the UK Exchequer and £300m in business rates.
• Hosted 390 million visits.
• Supported an average of 4,700 jobs annually for Liverpool residents.
• Played a key role in a 24% growth in the economic value of the region’s visitor economy.
• Supported 500,000 local young people by funding community projects.
• Hosted 1,500 community events and around 12,000 charity collections.