Garden Festival Campaign

 

 

 

Welcome to our website.

 

The Garden Festival Campaign  was formed  in Feb 2002, by a group of south Liverpool residents in response to development proposals for the Mersey riverfront site of the former International Garden Festival (the IGF). The proposals were submitted by the former leaseholders of the land, the London based property company  Wiggins. 

The  Garden Festival itself was a remarkably successful event, and the fond memories and emotions it created are still etched in many people’s minds. However, since the initial high point in 1984, much of the original site has entered into a downward spiral and has languished into disuse and dereliction.

This ongoing situation is admittedly still causing some difficulties  for nearby residents, but we did not believe that those problems should be used as an excuse by any property developer to foist upon the residents of Liverpool any scheme that destroys the recreational concept of the Otterspool promenade.

The piece of land in question, is structurally part of the grand two mile Otterspool Promenade scheme, which was started in the 1930s, and has been evolving ever since. The construction formula was to build a promenade some distance out from the shoreline, and use the space between them for tipping, and eventually create a riverfront park on top of the infill.

 

 

 

 

 

This long standing modus operandi is perfectly obvious, and any gambling  property developer who manages to get hold of any of this land, and has fiscal ideas that are insensitive to the 75 years of goodwill that lie behind this  gem of town planning, can not claim ignorance, and has no right to whinge if they are not allowed to build.

 The site at risk is a  a fabulous green area,  a haven for wildlife, and effectively, a piece of wild countryside which has been transported into suburbia.

Any development of this land may cause substantial problems and risks to the community. There could be a health risk to nearby residents from disturbing this former tip, which contains both domestic and industrial waste, and also a risk of  the extra traffic it would create, causing severe congestion, or even gridlock.

We are now informed that the lease has been acquired by another property company, so we could well be entering another round of this saga. Community action, combined with some wise decisions by the planners and councillors, which we appreciate, has so far prevented the catastrophe  that threatens this land, but we need to be vigilant and maintain the pressure.

Please check the latest news section for updates to this ongoing situation.

To E-mail us our address is -( festival.campaign   followed by the curly "at" sign, then,   virgin.net) 

sorry to mess you about with all that code for a simple E mail address, but it is to reduce the spam risk caused by spammers using search programs that  trawl through the web looking for mail addresses.