Team named for 20-acre student halls redevelopment
Liverpool University has revealed the design team for the £58m Greenbank project in Mossley Hill, on the edge of Sefton Park two miles south of the city centre.
The architect is Sheppard Robson, quantity surveyor Gleeds, WYG on mechanical and electrical engineering, Sutcliffes for structural engineering and RLF as construction manager.
Sheppard Robson has a strong track record with the university, designing the £19m engineering building on Brownlow Hill, completed in 2009, the £21m Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine in 2007 and Small Animal Teaching Hospital, also completed in 2007.
The redevelopment will involve a mixture of demolition and new-build as well as refurbishment. The new-build will cost around £50m, refurbishment £4m and sports facility £4m. The works will be phased to allow continuous use of the canteens currently located at the site. There are currently 915 bedrooms in two halls: Derby & Rathbone, and Gladstone & Roscoe.
The contract awards were announced on Thursday in the Official Journal of the European Union.
The design team will now work up detailed plans and prepare planning applications. A heritage assessment has been completed and agreed with Liverpool City Council.
One of the buildings to be refurbished is grade 2* listed and there is another historic building highlighted for sensitive treatment in the heritage assessment.
The site is close to the controversial Sefton Park Meadows area currently being marketed for sale to house builders by the council against the wishes of many local residents.
I hope the University will respect Liverpool’s Heritage. The students who will use these new halls will see the incredible vision of our Victorian Ancestors embodied in Sefton Park and this includes the Andre designed entrance at the Meadows, Queens Drive Boulevard. This type of entrance including the Pattern of the Boulevard can be seen in his seminal work L’Art Des Jardins 1879. I hope the University will support the local residents in saving this priceless piece of our history. John Middleton
By John Middleton
I completely agree with the above, I graduated last year as a planning student from the University and stayed in Carnatic Halls in my first year (greatly appreciating the surroundings of Mossley Hill/Sefton Park) – I always thought the department in which I studied missed a trick getting students involved in University-owned ‘home grown’ regeneration. Tackling issues at the local and ‘real’ level with current planning students can’t be a bad thing. I like to think now I am in a graduate position my head aint’ too far in the clouds!
By LJA