Liverpool City Council inner zones

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Waterfront

Liverpool's Waterfront is one of the city's greatest assets. The Three Graces at the Pier Head are one of the most instantly recognised group of buildings all over the world.
The area that includes the Albert Dock has been given World Heritage Site Status. The Tate Gallery and Maritime Museum can be found here.
The Albert Dock is the largest group of Grade 1 listed buildings in England. It was designed by Jesse Hartley; and opened by Prince Albert in 1846.
The Liverpool Arena and Convention Centre is being built on the King's Dock. Next to the scheme will be two new hotels. Together, these will help to improve the Waterfront Area's position as a major cultural and leisure attraction for Merseyside and the North West region.
Since 1998, many new office buildings have appeared at the Princes Dock. These have helped to expand the city's Commercial Quarter.
To the very south of the City Centre Waterfont is Liverpool Marina. From the mid 1980's this has been developed as a popular; high quality residential location with yachts berthed between stunning quayside apartments.

Commercial District

Liverpool's Commercial District has the largest number of offices on Merseyside. Over 8,000 people work in major firms including: Royal Sun Alliance; Littlewoods; Unisys; British Telecom and the Liverpool Daily Post & Echo newspaper.
The Old Hall Street area was rebuilt in the early 1970's with the bland architecture of the time. In more recent years; many of the buildings have been improved. New pavements have also been built.
During the early 2000's, much of the redundant Victorian building stock was changed to residential apartments. This usually had leisure/bars/restaurants/retail uses on the ground floors. Today, there is a high demand for quality modern floorspace which developers are moving in to the city to meet.
Increasing business confidence has seen a growing interest in providing new, higher quality office floorspace. An example of this was Beetham Tower; completed in 2004 and which includes the new Radisson Hotel. A major new office scheme is now being built at St Paul's Square.
Between 1993 and 2002, office space rents rose 4.5% every year compared to the national average of 3.4%. By 2006, rents have reached over £18 per square foot. Space in the new St Paul's Square is expected to reach £20 per square foot when it becomes available in 2007.

Live Work District

This historic and attractive part of the city is seeing a huge change as city living becomes ever more popular. The area has the potential to create a quality architectural mix of both high class and affordable housing. The many main road frontages and principal streets in this area house banks (centred on Castle Street) and a rapidly growing number of restaurants.
This is also an area where empty office floorspace has been changed to apartments.
Traffic is to be calmed in both Dale Street and Victoria Street. Here, pedestrian friendly zones will be created to link the Retail Area with the Commercial District.
One of the larger schemes here is Urban Splash's Old Haymarket. This began in 1999 and shows the faith which niche developers operating in the city have. They clearly want to keep the best of the oldest buildings; and to create striking new architecture next to them.

Lime Street Gateway

Lime Street Gateway includes Liverpool's Cultural Quarter. This area is home to some of our classical buildings, such as the National Museums and Galleries for Merseyside. Among these are the Liverpool Museum and Walker Art Gallery. The Central Library and Picton Reading Rooms are also part of this group. Opposite them sits St George's Hall; this is one of Prince Charles' favourite buildings.
Lime Street Gateway is so named because of its importance as the northern entrance to the City Centre. Lime Street Station is a terminus for mainline rail services; although it does give access to Liverpool's underground rail network. It is here that many visitors to Liverpool arrive and have their first view of the city and what it has to offer.

Retail Area

Liverpool evolved from a market town to become the most famous trading city in the world. Its status declined during the 1990's in the face of fierce competition from Manchester. However, in December 2003, retail experts Gerald Eve voted Liverpool as the most improved city for shopping. They praised how easy it was to move around in the city centre. They also liked the parking and public transport improvements that had taken place between 2000 and 2003.
Although the city does not sit in the top 10 league of shopping destinations, European Capital of Culture status and the emerging Paradise Street Project will help to boost its position back into the top 10 in the next few years.
The current rebuilding of the retail area began in the late 1990's when Neptune Developments acquired the Queen Square area. Here, they developed new leisure facilities including cafes, restaurants and bars grouped next to the Marriott Hotel.
At the same time, Merseytravel began a major investment to build the new Bus Passenger Facility on Roe Street.
More recently, a programme of high quality pavement replacing works has begun. The flagship scheme finished early last year and was the redesign of Williamson Square. It has a series of jet fountains that are very popular.

Ropewalks

Ropewalks is a unique area of the city with a large number of historic warehouse buildings. It has increasingly become the centre for Liverpool's night-time economy and creative industries. The area owes much of its character and name to the craft of rope making for sailing ships that dominated the area until the 19th century.
In the late 1990's, the Liverpool Ropewalks Partnership helped the regeneration of the area through development; conservation; public realm improvements and training; employment and business support with a package of national, European and private sector funding. 815 new jobs were created.
Among the major new schemes completed as late as 2004 were East Village and Manhattan Place. This was a £20 million mixed use scheme with a training centre for Liverpool Community College, apartments, workspace, shops and cafes.
Ropewalks also contains Liverpool's Chinese community. This boasts the largest Chinese Arch in Europe.

L1/Baltic

The Baltic Triangle is an historic port area bordered by Ropewalks, Paradise Street and Kings Dock. It contains the Waterfront Business Park. Here, money has been spent in recent years with the opening of two new hotels and the refurbishment of some historic warehouse buildings for new commercial and leisure uses.
A masterplan framework for the area has now been developed between Liverpool Vision and the L1 Partnership. The former Council estate along Great George Street is to be replaced with high quality private residential development; whilst Great George Square itself was refurbished in 2004.
The northern end of the area is also being redeveloped with apartments which have stunning views over the docks and the City Centre.

Marybone

Marybone is made up mostly of a long established residential community to the north of the city centre. These give an important source of family homes; and one of the city centre's four primary schools.
In recent years Liverpool John Moores University has spent money to provide new student facilities.
New apartments have also been built in the Highfield Street area and along Pall Mall.