KEY POINTS:
One of the largest urban renewals in Europe is under way in the historic British city of Liverpool and at the end of this month the initial part of the £1 billion ($2.5 billion) project will be unveiled.
On May 29, a collection of some of the world's biggest retailers will open in Liverpool for the first time, including All Saints, American Apparel, Aldo, Pull & Bear and Apple.
By September 30, a grand opening is planned for the area from the docks on the Irish Sea up into the city centre.
Now, many streets are shut, workmen are swarming across the site and much of the central area is inaccessible. Hotels are packed with construction workers and the streets are lined with cranes, construction material, trucks, trade and delivery vehicles.
This historic area has Unesco World Heritage status and the development is right in the area of the Thomas Steers Dock, the world's first wet dock and the reason Liverpool became one of the world's richest cities in the early 1800s.
As the city revamp takes shape, I arranged to visit, interested to see the site and something more: how Britain's richest aristocrat is handling the development business.
The sixth Duke of Westminster's Grosvenor Group is the developer of the project. Major-General Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor has a personal fortune estimated at £7 billion ($18 billion) and he does nothing on a small scale.
Grosvenor is partway through Liverpool One, a development bigger than the ambitious White City in London and spanning a number of city blocks from the docks area to the heart of the shopping precinct.
The project will bring 140,000sq m or 14ha of new shops, more than twice the size of Sylvia Park in Auckland's Mt Wellington or Westfield's new Albany mall.
The Grosvenor family land holdings in central London date back to 1677 and the group achieved a record last year when profits before tax increased 3 per cent to £524 million ($1.3 billion). The Duke's family own more than 100ha of the exclusive Mayfair and Belgravia in London as well as land in Scotland, France and many other parts of Europe. The company began investing in Australia in 1967 and is involved in commercial developments in Sydney and Brisbane. New Zealand is yet to draw Grosvenor's interests.
In Liverpool, the Duke's man on the ground is Rod Holmes, Grosvenor's project director, based in an office in the city's Church Street mall.
Standing in front of a scale model of the project, Holmes points out how much of Liverpool's downtown area never recovered from bombing in World War II.
The area around the docks was bombed during 1941 air raids, he said, describing how this led to years of neglect and the need for rebuilding.
Liverpool is Europe's cultural capital this year and the redevelopment has drawn critics. In the midst of this major event, the city is not yet finished and is still a vast building site.
Holmes acknowledges that time has been his biggest enemy.
"It's been urgency from the start and we're still suffering from pushing some of the guys to the limit."
The physical layout of the project was one of the most important points in its planning phase, he recalled.
"Grosvenor had its own idea of how the city centre should be. We knew it would not be a shopping mall. We would use the existing streets and create links, not enclosed, but open. We're not shifting Liverpool to the (Mersey) river, but extending it," Holmes said.
Lack of shopping and little urban renewal had been the city's biggest problem and a few years ago, Liverpool had slipped to become one of Britain's least popular shopping destinations. Holmes hopes Liverpool One will change that and says tourism is one of the city's key strengths.
"Liverpool is about TV personalities, the Beatles, music, so the city is about tourism. From September, the city centre will be very busy with people," he said.
Last decade, Liverpool was lagging behind many other British cities in its development, declining economically and physically. Loss of traditional industries, particularly the port, led to job cuts, unemployment, riots and industrial militancy. In just 40 years, the city lost half its population.
The British Government responded to the economic decline of the 1970s and 1980s and encouraged an urban renaissance in the north-west. By 1999, three originations got together to plan big changes for Liverpool: the Liverpool City Council, the Northwest Regional Development Agency and national regeneration body English Partnerships formed Liverpool Vision, the springboard which resulted in the city's rebuilding.
Liverpool became a British leader once again. Liverpool Vision was Britain's first dedicated urban renewal company formed a few weeks before Manchester, much to the delight of the Scousers.
Leasing has been Grosvenor's big focus lately as its project races towards being completed. Most of the 160 shops, bars and restaurants have been let.
In recognition of the area's importance, Grosvenor has developed a crypt containing the remains of the Thomas Steers Dock so people can visit the historic area near the Albert Dock.
Holmes is counting down until the end of this month when the locals get their first peek behind wire fences which have kept their city centre a building site for most of this decade.
* Anne Gibson visited Liverpool courtesy of Cathay Pacific and Accor Hotels.
