Is the future of Liverpool’s historic buildings five-star suites and crazy golf?

I’m not sure I believe in the stone tape theory. It’s the kind of thing pedalled by Yvette Fielding (of Most Haunted fame), which proposes that otherworldly howls and hauntings are merely the replaying of incidents so traumatic that they left an indelible ‘recording’ onto the very masonry of the building. Then, when the atmospheric conditions are right (or, in Yvette’s case, the cameras start rolling) they’ll be ‘replayed’ to scare the bejesus out of a hapless visitor.

It’s a shame, because I’m strolling around Dale Street’s newly five star-rated Municipal Hotel and, just like that scene in The Shining, I’m ambling down a corridor when suddenly I freeze in my tracks outside a bedroom. I know I shouldn’t turn the handle and risk disturbing the long-quelled horrors of the past, but my hand involuntarily twitches towards it.

This is Joe Anderson’s old bunker. His suite of offices where much of his downfall played out. I remember interviewing him here, and I mentally replay my own stone tape: “At the heart of our city is a UNESCO recognised model of a thriving mercantile city… Business is in our blood… But it’s the way we do business that most excites people…” he mused, prophetically, on a battered old sofa beneath fine Victorian rococo plaster ceilings. Well, it certainly excited some people. 

A decade has passed since then; the council having long since moved out to set up camp in Cunard House. And now I'm wandering around the city to get a sense of how these historic civic buildings are faring. 

The prevailing wisdom is that it’s the sight of new development zones, like Paddington Village, that truly reflect the city’s current state of health. Certainly, that’s where the lion’s share of the recent Levelling Up cash from Michael Gove is going (the rest is going to bail out the historic Greatie market site on Dryden street — nine years old and already unfit for purpose). But if that’s the case, what of our once-grand public piles of years gone by? Who cares for these inconvenient reminders of days past? Because hands up if you want a city full of Paddington Villages? Exactly.

There are over 2500 listed buildings in this city — some bouncing back, some in desperate need of care and some still in shock after recent dalliances with less-than-sensitive new custodians. 

Back in the Municipal, my ghosts remain undisturbed. Joe’s door is locked. Someone’s paid £650 for the privilege of staying in the ‘Presidential Suite’, its wood panelling recently buffed to a mahogany glow, its bathroom housed with a cube in the centre of the room, so as not to disturb its listed fixtures and fittings. 

It brings to mind those rambling old country inns inviting you to sleep in the same room where Mary, Queen of Scots, slept. I’m wondering whether the St John’s Market traders would fancy a whip round, to have the pleasure of going for a crap in the room where Joe once shat on them. 

I’ve a feeling it’d be worth the money. Heck, I’d chip in myself. 

But I don’t mention this to my guides, because that feels out of place. This is, after all, Liverpool’s very first five star hotel. And, well, good news about hotels is definitely something we should be celebrating around these parts. 

Make no mistake, the Municipal Hotel is worth celebrating. Many have promised, but Singapore’s Fragrance Group, with a franchise from upmarket French hospitality company, Accor, has delivered. Two years and £70 million later, the hotel has recently been awarded that coveted five star-status. 

It’s a big deal. As Commercial Development Manager Leanne Harrad tells me, inbound visits to the city are skyrocketing. People do want to come here. And they’ve cash to burn, evidently. “Middle Eastern visitor numbers are up 200%,” Leanne says. 

And five stars is where it’s at, if you’re on business from Bahrain. Or Brazil: “We get lots of South American visitors,” Leanne says. “There’s a strong bond, still, of merchant traders between Liverpool and the world’s historic ports.”

The Fragrance Group — together with architects Faulkner Chester Hall — has done good, injecting a cool, modern sheen beneath this elegant old girl’s bonnet. Brightly coloured sofas mooch about the snug library, its shelves populated with ephemera from the city’s heyday. The Palm Court, with its leaded glass roof lantern, glossy royal palms and marbled tiles, reminds me of how the Adelphi’s ballroom once looked. It almost gives me hope that it could again. If this is where I once queued all day for a parking permit, and now can snap my fingers for a bloody Mary, anything’s possible.

Across the road and up a bit, the old Magistrates Court is next in line to get a glow up. Here, instead of bedding down in the Mayor’s chambers, guests will have the chance to sleep in a cell.

Perhaps more heartening are plans to bring the old White Star Line headquarters at 30 James Street back to something approaching its former first-class passenger lounge status. Duncan Gray, the UK Managing Director for German-based RIMC, is overseeing that one. “I saw this building on a trip to Liverpool a few years ago, and fell in love with it,” he tells me as we take a tour. “Little did I know I’d be overseeing its renaissance.”

But here we are. I discover that the hotel was once owned by a company called Signature Living. Huh, that’s not a name I’m familiar with, I shrug, as I signal our legal team to step away from their horses. Not today, chaps. Not today. 

“With buildings like this, you need to work with their history, not fight against it,” Duncan says. “We want to be faithful to the fabric of the building, but not turn it into a museum.”

If you’re looking for a vote of confidence in the direction of travel Liverpool’s hospitality sector is heading, the upwards-of-£100-million pumped into these two hotels alone is a pretty good place to start. “The city’s taste has matured,” he says. “That’s why Hawksmoor and the Alchemist fit so well into these amazing old buildings, and why international brands are starting to make their move.”

But not all reimaginings are quite so surefooted. So we’d be wise to not let down our guard quite so eagerly.

I stroll up town, to the neoclassical gem of England’s first subscription library. Its Grade II* listing places it in the top 6% of all “important buildings of more than special interest” in the country.

Its status equals that of Battersea Power Station, The Shambles in York or Quarry Bank Mill in Styal. Or, for that matter, the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, right here.

But if I’m struggling to get a real sense of its splendour, it’s because there’s a saguaro cactus in my way, behind which a dayglo Day of the Dead skull lurks, menacingly, near the second hole. 

The interior of Bold Street’s once-mighty Lyceum has been reimagined as a neon-lit indoor crazy golf course. Not so long ago, frilly-aproned ladies scurried about with silver service pots of tea as mum and I tucked into Welsh rarebit, a Reeces’ cafe favourite. For a while it was Life cafe, one of Liverpool’s first cool city cocktail bars. Hands up who remembers that? 

Does it matter that the Lyceum is more gory than glory these days? Does it matter that Millennium House’s incarnation as the Shankly Hotel almost had a water slide down its side? At least these buildings aren’t boarded up, I try to reason with myself. 

The fact remains that, however you try to run the numbers, a portfolio of grand civic buildings just doesn’t fit into a shrinking city; and this city has more than its share. From town halls to cinemas, churches to libraries, the fortunes of Liverpool’s stately public buildings track those of the city itself.

Our municipal might is not what it was. But these Gothic piles remain. A gently crumbling reminder of better days past. 

Few are crumbling more than the ABC Cinema on Lime Street, sinking ever-more-certainly into oblivion. But this, too, had a fighting chance for survival. Ion Developments (then Neptune) had secured listing building consent and were making plans for a flagship media centre and TV studios. 

Following the arrests of Nick Kavanagh and Joe Anderson, the agreement came to an abrupt end, as the council claimed it wanted to “review” how property disposals would take place in the future. 

Nothing’s happened since — save for the steady advance of the city’s latest buddleia plantation. 

"We’re waiting for the right investor,” councillor Nick Small tells me. “Sometimes you have to play the long game, not just accept the quick fix.”

Maybe. But doesn’t the long game come with a side order of managed decline? “You have to remember, these are difficult buildings to repurpose,” Nick says. “They often have a negative value because of the work needed to bring them back to life.”

That didn’t stop Ion Developments drawing up its plans, and getting listed building approval to give the cinema a much-needed second act. So, I ask, are there any expressions of interest in ABC, or any of the currently at-risk buildings scattered across the city like cavities awaiting extraction? “Nothing active,” Nick says.

“I have a keen sense of our history,” he adds. “We’ve learned from the mistakes of the recent past. We’re far more concerned about coming up with a solution that really protects our heritage.”

They should be. Because there are plenty of examples where this wasn’t the case. I rattle a few off. What about the time the council gave the go-ahead for developers iliad to demolish a Grade II-listed building, and smash the ornate stonework off another, along Sir Thomas Street to make way for an ill-fated (as in, it never materialised) five star hotel — now a standard-issue Doubletree? 

Or that other fateful day when dodgy developers met ornate stonework? Maghull Development’s sickening desecration of Josephine Butler House must rank as one of the city’s grimmest sagas of civic shame. 

“In the past we badly needed investment,” Nick says, “and sometimes we were too hasty to grab it when it was offered. We’re in a much better position now. Look at Aloft opening up the Royal Insurance building. Developments like this offer all of us the chance to see inside some of these buildings for the very first time. Hospitality is definitely a major catalyst for change.” 

John Belcham, chair of the Merseyside Civic Society, knows this more than anyone. He even runs a city walking tour called ‘saved by hospitality’, pointing out some of the better ones. But there are clear lessons to be learned in all of this, John says. “For too long, Liverpool favoured development at any cost. There was a time when the city was a pioneer in conservation, although that was partly because we couldn’t afford to knock anything down.”

With increased prosperity, developers soon came to scout out the city’s potential. “Anyone who was prepared to spend money was given the go ahead,” John says. “So, now, we’re left with a real mixed bag of failed schemes, or inappropriate new uses, such as the Lyceum’s crazy golf course.” John says.

“Plenty of developers get it right,” John says, singling out Accor’s reimagining of Dale Street’s Municipal Buildings, by the same team behind the Municipal Hotel, and Radisson’s Northwestern Hotel on Lime Street. “But these are people with reputation, and a track record of delivering on their promises,” he says. 

“Public bodies just aren’t good at coming up with innovative ways to make money and save these buildings,” John Belcham says, suggesting that public-private joint ventures offer some glimmer of hope. 

“Transforming these buildings into hotels is fantastic, but it can’t be the only solution. If it is, where are the public spaces, where are the civic societies going to meet, and where are the start-ups going to create the success stories of tomorrow?” John says. 

I end my travels at the top of the city, at Toxteth’s Welsh Presbyterian Church. Unlike the shiny new skyscrapers of Paddington Village, it was denied Levelling Up funds a few years ago, slamming the brakes on ambitious plans to turn it into a hub for disadvantaged kids.

Now, local residents are complaining of falling masonry as, after every winter storm, more of it returns, dust-to-dust, back into the ground. 

History may not be kind to some of the city’s recent developers. But wait awhile and there’ll be a new batch along in a minute. For our historic buildings, though, there are no second chances. We have to get it right. And we have to do it now. 

I’m reminded of Leanne’s comment, back in the Municipal Hotel, that it took 50 years to construct. “You could never build this now,” she told me, pointing out the ornate plasterwork and inlaid marquetry of the library’s wood panelling. “Those trades have gone.”

She's right, of course. These buildings speak of a different time. But they don’t speak of a different place: they remain a tangible touchstone to our shared history. The question is — how many of them are we prepared to carry forward into our shared future?