25/1/2006

The Clone Effect

By Chris Helm

Who do Liverpool City Council represent? A cynic might suggest that rather than representing the electorate as a whole, they are currently representing only the interests of big business.
It is the stated aim of the Council that Liverpool should officially be the most ‘business-friendly’ city in the U.K. by next year. However, when they talk about being business friendly, are they including any of the small businesses based in Liverpool City Centre? Or do they just mean Marks and Spencers, the Gap and every other chain-store that you can find in every other town and city in the UK? Recent actions by those running Liverpool would suggest that promoting cultural diversity in the 2008 European Capital of Culture is the last thing on their minds.

The award of ECOC to Liverpool just seems to have speeded up what was happening anyway. In the WEEK after the award, property prices in Liverpool rose by 10%. Since then property values have continued to soar, although obviously not at the rate of 10% a week! Nevertheless, what has happened is that small businesses have gradually been pushed out of the city centre to be replaced by big businesses that can afford to pay the higher rents.

Quiggins is the most well-known example of what has been going on. Quiggins is a unique building housing a vast array of small businesses, which sell everything from 2nd hand clothes to antique(ish) furniture. It is also very popular with young people. Inconveniently though, it happens to be right in the way of the pathway between Church Street and the Paradise Street development. So Quiggins has to move. The Council defended their decision to let his happen by pointing out that they have arranged for Quiggins to move into the building currently occupied by John Lewis. However, part of the charm of Quiggins is the building itself, which is completely different to any other in Liverpool. The John Lewis building is a massive bog-standard department store. Will some of the unique atmosphere of Quiggins be lost if it moves into a more conventional building? And will the move to Church Street ever happen? Rumour has it that by fighting against this move and by criticising the Council, the owners of Quiggins may have upset council leader Mike Storey to the extent that he is now putting every obstacle he can in the way of the move.

The traders employed in Quiggins are not alone in this city in being messed around. Earlier this year the Liverpool Palace was closed by its owners Urban Splash. This company are generally seen as a good thing as they are very much into urban regeneration. Unfortunately though, it's Urban Splash’s stated aim to use small businesses to start the regeneration of an area before forcing them out so they can be replaced by big business. At least they are honest about it. However, this must be no consolation to the small traders who suffer from this process.

The Picket has been another high profile casualty of council indifference. With its gig venue and recording studio, the Picket has done so much to help music in Liverpool. The Picket was housed in the Trade Union Centre on Hardman Street. The Centre was council funded and it was only a matter of time before a council hostile to trade unions cut their funding. The Trade Union Centre is another building with a wonderful interior. This has now been lost to the general public. It’s symbolic of much that is happening in Liverpool at the moment that the building will be converted into luxury flats.

The Picket will almost certainly rise again somewhere else, possibly in the ‘cultural quarter’ that the council are apparently planning to situate around Jamaica Street. It is very much debatable whether such compartmentalism would be welcomed by those involved in creative arts, or if the idea is workable.

Liverpool could well be suffering from a newly discovered but well-known syndrome – the clone effect. Or as Blur put it on ‘Bank Holiday’, “Every High Street looks the same”. This syndrome is at least recognised by Liverpool City Council. When I spoke to City Centre Neighbourhood Manager Mike Cockburn, he recognised the problem and believed the Grosvenor development would help. “Cities are becoming very similar… You’re dropped in somewhere and you can’t tell where you are… Grosvenor has the household names but also has specifically Liverpool businesses in it as well.” Hopefully the ‘Liverpool businesses’ will not only comprise George Henry Lee, now swallowed up by John Lewis. If the City Centre is only made up of franchises, a lot of its character will go.

Big business itself does not of course care about concepts such as ‘character’, their one concern being profit. Some corporations are greedier than others. Starbucks employ a policy called ‘clustering’ whereby they deliberately target towns and cities with a café culture and open up as many branches as they need to in order to suffocate their independent rivals and steal their business. Amazingly they have not tried this in Liverpool – YET.

The street traders’ removal from Church Street was another step towards that street looking exactly the same as every town/city centre in Britain. Think what you like about them, but some people MUST buy their stuff or they would go out of business! With no real street market like London, the traders do offer something different from the department stores. The traders were not taking money away from the big department stores, but the department stores wanted them gone, so they were moved, helped by a constant campaign by the local press. With a bit of positive thinking and a bit of investment from the Council, the appearance of the traders’ stalls could be improved and Liverpool could have itself a really good street market. As it is, the traders may continue to be messed around. Mike Cockburn sees the street traders’ new location as being a long-term solution but can offer no guarantees that they won’t be moved further out of the City Centre.

Competition in the City Centre will of course hot up even more when the Paradise Street development is completed. There is concern within the Council that the Grosvenor scheme could have an adverse effect on the rest of the City Centre. Mike Cockburn mentioned to me the effect that the new improved Bull Ring had on his town Birmingham’s traditional shopping streets New Street and Corporation Street. But things are bound to be easier for bigger businesses on Church Street than they are for the smaller businesses scattered about the City Centre.

As someone who moved to Liverpool 14 years ago, I have noticed a big decline in the number of small businesses on Renshaw Street, Berry Street and Hardman Street. There used to be a lot of small bookshops on these streets. Now they are none. They’ve partly been replaced by Rapid Hardware and partly by nothing at all! Bold Street, however, has changed remarkably little in comparison. Small businesses are apparently thriving there and consequently it’s a much more interesting street to shop in and walk down than Church Street. It should be a model for the rest of the City Centre.

One of the best shops on Bold Street (and in Liverpool generally) is News from Nowhere. Run by a women’s co-operative, it sells a tremendous range of books and much more. Maria Ng from the shop pointed out that big isn’t always best. “We order books quicker than Waterstones. People need to actively support local businesses. It needs a big change in peoples’ habits because we all use supermarkets.”

* Thanks to Stuart Wilks-Heeg of Liverpool University for providing information and help with this article