In every dream home a heartache
By Colin Moneyepenny
From Issue 58, Autumn 2002
Possibly it was Kevin Sampson who, I can recall
reading in TTW&R a couple of years ago, came
up with the scenario of a shining new downtown
dockside home for Liverpool (oops, it was actually
RAOTL – ed).
Subsequently it has of course been Everton who
have grabbed the script on the waterside wonderland
known as the Kings Dock. Personally I couldn’t
care less if Brazil and Real Madrid were to share
the ground –weird foreign idea that groundsharing
is - I still think it’s a daft place to
put a football stadium. For the minute, I’m
patiently waiting for the dream weavers of Liverpool
Vision to convince me it’s the stunning
masterpiece that the unending hype keeps proclaiming.
I suppose its about perspectives. Mine is as
a resident of Liverpool 1, about a quarter of
a mile from the dock. Now I’ve not lived
there all my life - though my wife and her family
have done - for several generations in fact. It’s
got an incredible history and has been a residential
area for a lot longer than just about anywhere
else in Merseyside. If I was back in any of the
other parts of the city I’ve previously
lived, not being a Blue, I’d likely not
give the issue of this Stadium a second thought.
If God had made me support Everton and I lived
in Woolton or Waterloo or Wherever it didn’t
directly affect me, I may even have been bitten
by the Kings Dock bug myself.
Or maybe not. For the record, I’d prefer
it if Liverpool stayed at Anfield but even as
a season ticket holder I see that row primarily
as an issue for the Club and the residents to
resolve and that was my view before I was aware
of the Dock proposal. If Liverpool were touting
the same move down here, my views would be the
same but a lot more “foam flecked”
and I’d imagine the season ticket would
long have been delivered in person back to Mr.
Parry.
Having the prospect of a big Premier League
ground – and about 80% of total attendances
at the “multi-purpose” Arena will
be for football – thrust into “my
backyard”, does concentrate your mind more
onto the cost side of a football equation you’ve,
as a fan, long conditioned yourself to think mainly
only has benefits. In fact I have lived a very
few yards from a Stadium before, but that was
through choice not someone saying “it’s
going there and its nothing to do with you pal”.
The thing that really bothers me most about the
process as it’s unfolded so far is the determination
of many in the pro-Stadium camp not to recognise
even the slightest imperfection in their dream.
For them it is wonderful in every way and all
dissenters must have a hidden agenda. Kings Dock
has indeed been prime conspiracy/ paranoia territory.
The present late summer situation on the development
is that the submission of a planning application
which had already been deferred has been put back
again because of problems with Everton/Houston
Securities guaranteeing their £35M contribution
and with the failure of builders Bovis Lend Lease
to so far underwrite the non Stadium part of the
development. Work on feasibility studies has,
for the moment, been suspended. If the project
proceeds, as Vision and the developers insist
will happen after this technical hiccough, it
will be at best late 2003 before there is a decision
by the Council on the planning application and
then only if it is not “called in”
by the Government.
So there is still some mileage in the process,
some clouds of doubt have started to emerge, many
difficult questions remain half answered at best
and we’re not even certain who the “jury”
on a planning application will be, let alone what
their final verdict will be. For this reason it
seems worrying to me that practically from the
first whistle there has been a determination to
sell the Arena as a done deal, a “fait accompli”
which is only awaiting the minor matter of construction
before the glorious blue - ribbon cutting ceremony
can commence.
The “Echo” set the scene for this
complacent triumphalism. Originally it slated
the plan as a no hoper before experiencing a sudden
blinding conversion which sent the editorial team
scuttling to their thesaurus for extra superlatives
for a stunning, world class masterpiece which
had apparently slipped by their attention barely
noticed for some months. “Oh, so that one’s
the Stadium plan - why didn’t you tell us
that before?”. After the preferred developer
status was announced, the front page boldly declared
“It’s Ours!” as if Trinity Mirror
had successfully put in a late bid themselves.
Bill Kenwright then said the Stadium was 99%
certain of going ahead while even the nature of
the planning application remained undecided, before
a single consultation meeting with local people
had been fixed, before even the Everton/Houston
part of the deal was sealed up. Most of the media
coverage until the end of August has followed
suit, along the lines of “when Everton relocate
to Kings Dock….” as though the word
“if” has disappeared from the language.
Even the Council’s own newsletter, which
should have been playing a straight bat, touted
it as a certainty.
Not surprising then that, at least up until
the latest news of problems, some Evertonians
have been picking their new matchday boozers and
debating names like McCartney Stadium, while some
people here have felt the formal consultation
process will only be a hollow, after the fact,
box-ticking exercise.
Some time ago now, Everton - without Bill Kenwright
– met with us and officially distanced themselves
from the “It’s Ours” mentality
and said they were well aware that this was far
from over. Indeed Philip Carter, Mike Dunford
and Ian Ross at that meeting, were genuinely courteous
and seemed to accept that the concerns we had
were very valid. The problem was, they seemed
to know very little more about what was going
on than we did. Ask “Vision” - the
regeneration company dealing with the site - or
ask the Council, was the stock answer to many
of our quite specific questions about how we feel
it will impact locally.
No one round here has any objections to Everton
having a decent new Stadium, but many sincerely
believe this isn’t the right site. It is
water-locked, and has huge access problems. Though
it might just, with some work, sustain a MEN type
indoor arena, a whopping big Wapping Stadium seems
a case of wishful thinking triumphing over objectivity.
Indeed, Everton must have once shared the same
worries as it was way down the list of their “possibles”
until the City Council, as Mike Dunford admitted
to us, invited them to submit a bid.
At present the local infrastructure creaks when
a few thousand turn up for fixed-time events like
the summer pops or a fireworks display. For example
Park Lane was jammed for several hours after Liverpool’s
treble homecoming last year. This wasn’t
a mirage, it actually happened and it’s
happened before. So it seems not unreasonable
to ask for reassurances that there will be major
investment in substantial infrastructure changes
to accompany the Stadium and that it can be absolutely
demonstrated that these will be effective.
The views of Vision and the developers on this
crucial issue have ranged from saying yes of course
massive investment in infrastructure must accompany
the Stadium to contrarily venturing that what’s
there now is more or less adequate. The new tram
system is essential one minute but - when questions
emerge about it ever happening - not very important
the next. From the tiny amount we know the stance
that little change is needed appears to be gaining
momentum and closing the Strand – town’s
busiest arterial route - for 20 minutes after
“events” is reported as the interim
favoured “solution” of Vision to a
traffic problem which perversely they don’t
entirely accept will materialise. It’s certainly
an interesting way for them to attempt to fulfil
their own stated city centre priority to “reduce
the dominance of traffic on the Strand”.
There are for the record quite a lot of answers
and reassurances on other issues – parking,
public safety, access for emergency services,
noise, litter, pollution and health, construction,
the legacy of multiple “events” -
which are also still needed. And that’s
before we get to the big strategic issues of Objective
One funding and the net economic and employment
effects for people locally and for Merseyside
generally. All of which is pretty serious stuff
and in my book rather more important than whether
the Stadium is Mickey Mouse or Amphibious Landing
Craft shape - which we are led to believe are
the only sort of factors that might lead to Government
intervention. It seems if you keep English Heritage
happy you’re half way there.
Yet this project has been pushed ahead with
little regard to such fine details. Its backers
started with their bold “can do” answer,
that a Stadium is going there - told us that it
will probably create loads of jobs and will be
dead good for everyone - and have then tried to
work out what the questions are. It seems to me
that the political stakes have been raised so
high by promises that this project will happen
that it’s now about squeezing the quart
into a pint pot. That reality has in effect meant
building a hermetic seal around a process that
has sadly been characterised by official secrecy
and unofficial insults rather than transparency
or rational debate.
The public consultation exercise locally has
been dismal and dragging out information or documentation
about anything of much significance, pretty much
impossible. At the one formal meeting that has
been held by Vision with the community, the project
managers took up a lot of time with a detailed
explanation of how wonderful the Stadium will
be inside, including the high tech flummery in
the executive boxes, until, after many looks of
astonishment all around, someone worked up the
courage to tell them that it may well be the greatest
Stadium this side of the Planet Zarg, but that
had no real relevance to the issues of traffic,
environment and “liveability” we had
come along expecting to discuss.
Vision have, since that debacle, not yet organised
a follow up meeting and their promised new website
is still under construction. They have sent out
what to me were a less than convincing set of
brief answers to questions raised with them. All
the important documentation remains out of reach
of the public, whatever side of the argument they
sit on. More bizarrely they launched, through
the “Echo”, the community programme
that will go with the Stadium, without bothering
to discuss it at all first with anyone in the
community. Whether this is all down to hopeless
public relations or a deliberate strategy to keep
noses out, I don’t know or really care –
the paternalistic end result is the same either
way.
Certainly, though much blame for this may be
laid at the door of Vision, Everton’s name
is blasted all over the project, so even if the
mysterious Houston Securities are the senior element
of the Stadium partnership, they should not escape
criticism, particularly when the point about lack
of involvement and information to local people
was made directly to them. Latterly they could
certainly have been far more influential than
they have been, but instead have contented themselves
with a back seat and sending out priority applications
for seats in a Stadium that may never be.
In all of Bill Kenwright’s voluminous
outpourings on Kings Dock, I cannot remember one
single mention of concern for the local community.
Bill, I’m told is a very, very nice man
and I have no reason to doubt it. Certainly he’s
entitled to his public displays of passion and
emotion for those wonderful Evertonians, for the
magnificent Paul Gregg - the string pulling, money
laden Director involved in Everton it appears
only because of what he believes Kings Dock will
deliver for Houston Securities - for the community
being left behind in Walton, for whoever he wants.
But his corresponding failure to deliver even
a crumb of consideration to us has set the tone
for some of his fellow Evertonians.
I can really only recall Ian Macdonald, from
the pro lobby, who has bothered to spare the thought
that local people’s views should be taken
seriously too. Thanks Ian – it’s an
appreciated gesture that was noticeable against
the surrounding sound of official silence. Much
of the rest of what little has been said about
residents has sadly been nasty and dismissive
or just plain stupid.
Evertonians for Kings Dock is a well organised
and articulate lobby group which as the name might
suggest, thinks this is a rather good plan. They
have strongly influenced the process so far and
quite probably without them the project would
have long since floundered. A point Messrs. Gregg
and Kenwright would do well to notice.
EfKD’s leading theorist on all things
good about Kings Dock, is someone who writes on
the Blue Kipper website under the pseudonym, Mickey
Blue Eyes. MBE is a professional who has, he says,
designed and run projects that make the KD look
like a toy village. As a result he is very authoritative
on the murky world of such projects and that allied
to his regular, not very off the record chats
with Vision Chairman Joe Dwyer, makes him a far
better source of information than any of the sops
we’ve been fed officially.
Mickey clearly sees anyone who doesn’t
agree with him about KD as the enemy. To be fair,
he doesn’t like quite a lot of people who
do support it either. His analysis though of what’s
happening - the wheeling and dealing - is often
sharp and illuminating and I couldn’t agree
more with his description of the “absurd
closed world that has engulfed the project from
the start” because that’s the chief
gripe of this article. But not the only one.
Mick is clear about his own motivation, “The
only thing I am interested in is securing the
project for Everton and its fans”. Seems
fair enough to me but then he complicates his
argument by insisting the overall project is essential
to the regeneration of the city which is more
debatable, before going way over the top to insist
that anyone who stands in its way - erm like us
– will be responsible for the future economic
stagnation of the city. Oh and they’ll lose
us Capital of Culture too.
All of this means he doesn’t like us very
much. “Leave the hysterical foam-flecked
hysterical jeering to our infamous tiny minority
of permanent whingers. In the end they won’t
matter. Constructive things happen in spite of
those arse-holes not because of them” or
“as for the mere moaners, they don’t
matter. They never have, except as an example
of how not to get through your life and maybe
as a butt for humour”. Oh dear - suddenly
we’re the axis of evil. Lucky we didn’t
mention the dirty fork as well.
So casually ignoring “the only thing I
am interested in is securing the project for Everton
and its fans”, we have the intertwining
of the Stadium with the future of the city. Essentially
Mickey’s saying, even asking questions about
the Stadium shows you’re a traitor to Liverpool,
pushing it back to the economic brink those of
us who lived here in the “bad old days”
remember so well. If it’s a strategy to
bully people it’s a good one but though
his tortured logic may wash with some, to me it’s
like a blue rag to a colour blind bull.
I buy into passion for your football team, whoever
they are, but tell me I’m not as passionate
about the future of the city I was born in, choose
to stay in, want my kids to have a future in and
wish to die in, because I want some bloody answers
to some relatively simple questions and I turn
to fury – oh all right then, mild anger.
Maybe I’m too cynical and if it was Liverpool
FC pitching for Kings Dock, with exactly the same
perceived benefits to the city, Mickey would still
be in there denouncing anyone like myself who
stood in its way, with his foam flecked invective.
Maybe.
The big economic question of course is will
this be a dynamic flagship project that contributes
to pulling us out of the endemic poverty that
brought the objective one status in the first
place? Or are such schemes just the suits versus
the unsuitable, a bonanza for people such as Paul
Gregg, with plenty of money already, while at
the trickle down end, not much changes? The conflict
is between those like Mickey, who claim a monopoly
of wisdom on the answer to that question and the
right to impose it on everyone else against those
of us who claim neither.
Now there is a completely different Mike who
is also involved with EfKD, but this one is the
less prosaic Mike Durkin, its joint co-ordinator.
This Mike has also had a similar bee in his bonnet
for some time about “can’t do mind-sets”
and our “nimby 3” Councillors, in
particular Joe Anderson, the new Labour, as opposed
to the “new Labour” leader, in the
city. How he can be classed as a nimby when he
lives miles away is beyond me. If anything he’s
a “Niseby” (Not in Someone Else’s
Back Yard) which I suppose makes the majority
of EfKD followers straightforward “Isebies”.
Don’t you just love acronyms?
Anyway this other Mike had the rather good idea
a few months ago of a couple of them meeting up
with a couple of us and at least trying to understand
each other’s points of view and seeing where
the common ground, if any, lay. We may all have
been bezzy mates by now but unfortunately the
meeting was called off by Mike at a few minutes
notice with no clear explanation but now I can
guess Mickey had been on telling him not to talk
to “arse-holes” who might show him
how not to live his life.
In hindsight the cancellation was just as well
as I suspect rather than being a chummy chat,
the meeting might have been what my old pal Bernard
Ingham once termed a “dialogue of the deaf”.
Come to think of it, the “I’m clever
and right and you’re thick and wrong”
attitude of MBE does have an Inghamian ring to
it.
The irony is that none of this wasteful intrigue
and slang matching need have happened. If the
plan is as perfect as until recently, we were
constantly told it was, it would certainly have
survived a more subtle and less antagonistic approach
than the one we have endured so far. If “everyone’s
a winner”, where’s the need for secrecy?
The point really is, no one has actually said
you “can’t do” this, but rather
that before you do it, you have to demonstrate
not only (because of objective one and the other
public funding) that the whole community will
benefit but also (regardless of funding) that
you’ve got the solutions to what seem on
the surface to be some fairly intractable problems.
Yet the machismo of the “can do, will
do” camp acknowledges no such problems so
even getting to the starting point for honest
debate has been difficult. “Can’t
do Mind-sets” is nice political rhetoric
but its bone shakingly empty when you apply it
to an area where developments, which wouldn’t
touch first base in other parts of the region,
are happening left, right and centre. The derided
ward Councillors are doing what every ward Councillor
on Merseyside, including Mike Storey, would do
in similar circumstances. Tossing insults and
acronyms about is just a smokescreen for not bothering
to engage with your critics. Tying the Stadium
in with the future of the city is a red herring,
or a blue kipper or something.
I’d suggest a more sensible way to proceed
would have been three pronged.
Firstly, draw down expectation by making it
very plain that the plan is a maybe and could
only proceed after and if the logistical and financial
problems were demonstrably shown as solvable i.e.
what are the problems, how can they be resolved,
how much will it cost and where will the money
come from? Then add to this cautionary strategy,
the semblance of a back up plan should indeed
the problems prove insurmountable. (We asked Everton
and there is no Plan B, beyond I suspect calling
the people at “Goodison For Everton”
for help). Finally as a principal part of your
programme, why not engage frankly and openly and
from the start with the local residents who you
have unilaterally decided are going to be your
new neighbours? After all, you’re the new
kids on the block, not them.
Of course what has happened has been more or
less the opposite of such a rational and fair
approach to the proper weighing up of costs and
benefits. Its legacy has so far been to create
mistrust on both sides of the argument, which
will result, is already resulting, in an almighty
blame game whichever way the issue is resolved.
If the project now does fall apart by being proven
nonviable or by squabbling amongst the partners,
Evertonians will be rightly furious at being led
to the water but in the end not being allowed
to drink. If it goes ahead with a cavalier disregard
for solutions to local concerns, there will be
an equally bitter and enduring legacy.
The third way of course is that a Stadium is
built that not only makes old blue eyes happy
but also accounts for all the concerns expressed
above. A tall order quite possibly. But for our
part, a change from the taciturn approach by the
“unelected and unaccountable grandees of
LiverpoolVision” - as EfKD once referred
to them when they suspected they were about to
rule in favour of the rival ICIAN bid - even at
this relatively late stage may help. Persuading
them and the Stadium supporters that we have lives
and aspirations that also count is of great importance.
Vision did say that existing city centre communities
must feel the benefit of change so by their own
words they and their chums at EfKD should be engaging
with, rather than alienating, us.
What do we want to see? How about information
and lots of it but not shoved at us in huge, indigestible
bundles at the last minute so another box can
be ticked? How about consultation that consults
and includes rather than hands down what’s
been decided? How about an insight into the convoluted
process that led us to this stage, 95% of which
has been conducted behind closed doors? How about
transparency rather than secrecy?
How about the same treatment for us that would
be afforded residents in the “leafier suburbs”
if, post very unlikely mega lottery win, I came
up with a plan to build a Stadium in a field next
to Philip Carter or Joe Dwyer (Vision Chairman)
or Mark Dickenson (Echo Editor) or any of the
other prime movers and shakers in this one?
Or how about an in depth community consultation
along the lines of that being done by Liverpool
FC which Mike Storey lauded extensively and said
should be the model for community engagement with
new Stadium developments anywhere in the country?
If its good enough for the aloof aristocrats of
Anfield, how about the “people’s club”,
with a far greater budget explaining, if they
won’t follow suit, why not? How about, if
they don’t do it, them reminding us again
why they’re the “people’s club”?
How about a bit of even-handedness from the
Liverpool Echo? How about them attempting at least
a hint of consistency in their editorial position?
How can we unashamedly be derided as self-interested
nimbys in one column while later the same privileged
pulpit proclaims Anfield residents as the most
important people in the Liverpool ground debate.
Well, we’re either all selfish nimbys or
we’re all salt of the earth residents –
so take your pick of sad stereotypes, but if you
choose to insult us, do the same to them.
If Everton and Liverpool depart Goodison and
Anfield respectively, we will witness the end
of a glorious shared football history and of arguably
the most famous heritage in world football. If
that happens then as a fan I will be sad but then
that’s life. As a resident however, my fear
is that Kings Dock would at the same time turn
out to prove both “pro” and “anti”
camps right by being a dream come true for its
blue devotees and a living and enduring mess for
the people closest to it. I may soon have Everton
moving in next door but they’ve never felt
so far away.
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