Interview: Jenny Douglas - Head of Area Investment
Jenny Douglas is Liverpool Vision’s Head of Area Investment. Jenny and her team work closely with businesses and other key stakeholders to set the strategic direction for Liverpool’s city centre, ensuring the right conditions for its growth are identified, developed and maximised.
How would you explain your role within Liverpool Vision? What are your key responsibilities?
As part of Liverpool Vision my team and I have responsibility for the economic development of the city centre, on behalf of the City Council. At a strategic level we look at the city centre and how it can be improved and developed to fully capitalise on its potential as a place to live, work, visit, invest and study.
With partners we develop and deliver strategies for areas of the city centre including the main retail area, the Dale Street / Victoria Street Quarter / Stanley Street Quarter / Knowledge Quarter and the Waterfront.
We also work closely with City Council colleagues involved in Development, Planning, Highways and Neighbourhood Management and with Liverpool Vision’s inward investment and international team to develop bespoke property and site options.
Liverpool Vision has recently re-organised its structure. How has this benefited the city?
Liverpool Vision’s new structure has enabled all its teams to add value to each other’s areas of work to benefit the city. Together we are a very skilled and effective team. The recent co-location of the City Council’s Culture Team has added to that critical mass of experience.
Prior to Liverpool Vision’s re-organisation my team and I focussed on co-ordinating public sector funding to deliver highly successful initiatives, including the city centre movement strategy, arena and convention centre and the new office floor-space in the Commercial District. These initiatives helped Liverpool City centre’s physical infrastructure become fit for purpose, delivering the high quality buildings, amenities and infrastructure it previously lacked.
With the availability of public funding reduced our role has changed. Our focus is now on working with the business community and pulling together the various strands of the work that Liverpool Vision engages in within the city centre environment whether that is strategic direction, inward investment, business support, entrepreneurship, marketing or promotion.
The City centre now has a very high quality environment. However that there is still much to be done to enhance the city centre’s physical infrastructure, including a ready supply of floorspace to meet the needs of our business community – particularly within the Life Sciences sector and in our Commercial District, improved IT connectivity and further enhanced public realm.
Your team covers quarters including Liverpool’s Commercial District, Renshaw Street, Stanley Street and the Waterfront, all very different areas. Are there any principles that remain the same when developing these areas?
Yes, the methodology and objectives are the same in all of them. They all involve helping businesses come together, share expertise and work collaboratively, whether they are restaurants, shops, apartments, offices or major leisure destinations.
In areas such as Renshaw Street, St Georges Quarter and the Baltic Triangle we are collaborating with businesses and helping the business community develop activities and interventions to promote and maximise each area’s potential. Our city centre business communities are very energetic and recognise that working together to improve their areas pays dividends.
It could be said that we ensure that the ‘It’s Liverpool’ message is delivered on the ground. ‘It’s Liverpool’ is about collaboration. The partnerships we have formed help to develop Liverpool’s key economic growth sectors including the visitor economy, creative & digital and financial & professional sectors by creating, unique city places which reinforce the ‘It’s Liverpool’ message.
What we are very clear about is that it’s not just about creating a high quality physical environment; it’s also about the interactions, activities and events that take place within that environment. Good examples are the Bold Street Festival and the Hope Street Feast where the local business communities have organised events which have helped develop the character and potential of Ropewalks and Hope Street respectively.
Our approach is one of light touch intervention. We oil the wheels.
Tell me about your team. What are their areas of expertise?
Alongside myself, my team consists of two senior city centre managers, Matt Biagetti and Ann Hopper. Matt works primarily within the Knowledge Quarter, Hope Street and Ropewalks areas of the city centre, while Ann works with the Commercial District and the Stanley Street, Dale Street and Victoria Street areas. I am currently covering other areas such as Waterfront and Baltic Triangle myself.
Alongside the geographic focus we interact with the further education, health, digital, life science, financial and professional, retail and visitor economy sectors that inhabit the city centre. We have a background in planning and surveying but we all also have been heavily involved in physical and economic regeneration and place making for the past ten years.
You have worked on many city centre projects during your time at Liverpool Vision. What project are you most proud of?
It has to be Liverpool One. There were a lot of people and organisations involved in the delivery of Liverpool One and many claim an involvement and credit. My team and I were involved at the very beginning selecting Grosvenor as the City Council’s development partner. Many of the developers who submitted proposals suggested a covered shopping centre solution. We were very clear that we wanted streets and buildings that connected back into the city centre. At the time it was a brave requirement as retail developers were still building covered shopping malls. We were fortunate in selecting Grosvenor; they shared our vision. Although my input was relatively small I like to think that it was quite influential and helped to ensure that Liverpool One knitted itself seamlessly into the fabric of the city centre contributing to Liverpool becoming one of the top five most popular retail destinations in the UK.
What exciting projects are in the pipeline?
There are lots of exciting projects in the works. Working with British Waterways to animate and better use the Waterfront’s waterspaces, promoting the Stanley Street Quarter to the LGBT community internationally, realising the ambition of the Ropewalks area to become a thriving digital hub and in between times working with colleagues to help indigenous businesses to grow and attract big inward investors.
However the City Centre Strategic Investment Framework is currently our biggest project. It will be a new, ten year vision, building upon and refreshing our 2000 Strategic Regeneration Framework, which successfully guided the delivery of the physical regeneration of the city centre over the last decade. Our hope is that it will be as good as the 2000 version which is an exciting challenge in itself. We will particularly be looking at the key growth sectors, benchmarking other major international cities and taking Liverpool further forward into the next stage of its evolution.
Ann’s next challenge is to work with partners, particularly the Homes & Communities Agency, to develop the Pall Mall site to deliver the next phase of Liverpool’s Commercial District expansion. She is also working with the owners of the Three Graces on the Waterfront. A lot of investment has been put into these prestigious buildings but some have vacant space. They are working together to produce a promotion and marketing strategy and looking at how public realm and connectivity to the buildings can be improved.
Matt is driving forward work to ensure the infrastructure in the Knowledge Quarter is fit for purpose. Alongside Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus the City Region’s Knowledge Economy Plan identifies the city centre’s Knowledge Quarter as the most important location for science and innovation in the city region. Matt’s challenge is to ensure that the area presents itself as a world class investment location, with the entire enabling infrastructure in place, including the right supply of floorspace.
Alongside this he is busy working with local businesses across the city on a range of eclectic projects including re-establishing the Cavern Quarter as a Mecca for live music and assisting local enthusiasts establish skateboard parks. So you can see, we are a very small but very busy team!
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The Capital, 39 Old Hall Street, Liverpool
L3 9PP
Telephone: +44(0)151 600 2900
Email:
info@liverpoolvision.co.uk