Liverpool to explore options for New Chinatown site

The city council has agreed to provide a report outlining the options available for retaking control of the long-stalled Great George Street site, including exercising compulsory purchase powers.

Liverpool City Council’s decision to take action follows a motion lodged by the city’s Lib Dem leader Cllr Richard Kemp urging the council’s director of regeneration to intervene. Kemp said the site “blights the appearance of the city to tourists and potential investors alike”.

New Chinatown was the subject of £200m redevelopment proposals from North Point Global in 2015 that never materialised. 

North Point’s plan for the site, located east of the Baltic Triangle, featured 800 homes, a 140-bedroom hotel and 120,000 sq ft of offices. The developer was delivering the project through its China Town Development Company SPV, later renamed The Great George Street Project.

North Point’s involvement in the project ended in 2018 when Great George Street Developments took control of the site. Receivers have since been appointed to The Great George Street Project.

GGSD then lodged fresh plans for the site that were approved in 2019.

This scheme proposed the creation of 446 apartments across seven buildings of between two and 18 storeys. Like North Point’s project, the refreshed proposals featured a 140-bedroom hotel and more than 100,000 sq ft of offices. 

However, the 8.4-acre site, once subject of a 740-home proposal by Urban Splash, remains undeveloped.

Further north, Liverpool City Council will also seek to find a way forward for another stalled development site.  

In 2016, JGLT Developments won permission to redevelop the site of Eldon Grove, a grade two-listed building off Limekiln Lane. 

Eldon Grove would have been restored and converted into 45 apartments, and another 85 new-build flats were proposed. JGLT was dissolved in September 2020.