In the blighted streets around Liverpool's Anfield stadium,
residents are packing up and leaving their family homes, so the football club
can have them demolished and expand their Main Stand. In the six months since
the club scrapped their decade-long plan to build a new stadium on Stanley
Park, and reverted to expanding Anfield instead, Liverpool city council has
been seeking to buy these neighbours' homes, backed by the legal threat of
compulsory purchase.
People's farewells are bitter, filled with anger and
heartbreak at the area's dreadful decline and at the club for deepening the
blight by buying up houses since the mid-1990s then leaving them empty. A few
residents are refusing to move, holding out against the council, which begins
negotiations with low offers. These homeowners believe they should be paid
enough not only to buy a new house but to compensate for the years of
dereliction, stagnation and decline, and crime, fires, vandalism, even murders
which have despoiled the area. Their resentment is compounded by the fact that
they are being forced to move so that Liverpool, and their relatively new US
owner, Fenway Sports Group, can make more money.
On Lothair Road, which backs on to the Anfield Main Stand,
one man who lived next door to a house Liverpool own and have left empty,
shuttered – "tinned up" as the locals call it – shook his head.
"I'm not moving out," he told the Guardian, "I've been driven
out."
Residents' bitterness derives from when the club started
buying houses in Lothair Road, without saying they were doing so or making
their intentions clear. The club used an agency to approach some residents,
while some houses were bought by third parties then sold on quickly to the
club. That left residents with the belief, which has endured ever since, that Liverpool
were buying up houses by stealth, to keep prices low.
The club have never publicly explained in detail what they
did, and declined to answer the Guardian's questions about their historic
behaviour and current plans. Neighbours, many of whom have lived in Anfield for
decades, remembering a vibrant, flourishing area, believe Liverpool bought and
left houses empty to deliberately blight the area, intending it would prompt
people to leave and drive house prices down.
Howard Macpherson, now 52, was the first to sell his house
on Lothair Road to the club, in 1996. He had lived there, at No 39, a
four-bedroom end terrace, for 10 years. Macpherson says it was a fine home,
which he had spent money refurbishing, but after Liverpool bought it they
always left it empty – now for 17 years.
"Anfield was a good area, all the houses occupied,
nothing like it is today," says Macpherson, who runs a garage, Aintree
Motors. "The area started to decline in the early 1990s with the city's
economic problems. But Liverpool football club accelerated the decline, by
leaving good houses empty and boarded up. It wasn't a natural decline; it was
engineered."
The involvement in the process of a notorious solicitor,
Kevin Dooley, acting for the club, did not encourage confidence. Dooley, who
acted for several Liverpool players and the convicted drug baron Curtis Warren
as well as the club before he died in 2004, was struck off by the Law Society
in 2002 after it found him guilty of being involved in fraudulent purported
bank schemes.
Liverpool were motivated to buy neighbouring houses by a
fear of losing pre-eminence in English football after their mighty playing
success and financial dominance of the 1970s and 80s. The club felt bruised by
having been delayed in building the new Centenary Stand because of two elderly
sisters, Joan and Nora Mason, who refused to leave their house at No 26 Kemlyn
Road, until November 1990. Manchester United entered the super-commercialised
Premier League era by floating on the stock market in 1991, raising £6.7m to
seat the Stretford End, and with Old Trafford's ceaseless, lucrative expansion
and Sir Alex Ferguson's team-building, Liverpool fell behind United's
money-making capacity.
The club turned their attention to expanding the Main and
Anfield Road stands, although they did not announce this intention or discuss
it openly with residents. The Main Stand backs tightly on to the terraced row
of odd numbers on Lothair Road. Liverpool began buying houses in 1996, mostly
leaving them empty. Land Registry records reveal that between January 1996 and
March 2000, Liverpool bought 10 houses on Lothair Road.
Most were on the odd side, closest to the Main Stand: Nos 1,
3, 7, 9, 15, 33, 35 and Macpherson's No 39. In March 1999 Liverpool made their
first purchase across the road, on the even side, No 16. That row is not needed
for a bigger Main Stand itself, but the residents, and those in the row behind
on Alroy Road, would have their right to light blocked by it, a major obstacle
to planning permission. In March 2000 Liverpool bought No 10 Lothair Road. That
house, like most Liverpool bought, was never again occupied, has been empty for
13 years and is "tinned up".
Liverpool also bought houses on Anfield Road: grander
Victorian piles with front gardens, backing on to Stanley Park; almost the
whole row opposite the stand, Shankly gates and Hillsborough memorial: 51, 53,
55, 61, 63, 69 and 71. These houses were also left mostly empty and allowed to
fall into disrepair.
With houses empty and demand for them falling in a city
struggling to recover from its 1980s economic decimation, the Anfield area
collapsed into dramatic decline. Alongside Liverpool football club, family
homes and private landlords, the main other property owner was Your Housing, a
large group of housing associations, then called Arena. It also began to leave
properties "tinned up" – 265 were empty in the wider Anfield area by
2011. Residents complain that as the area was blighted, problem tenants moved
in, bringing crime and antisocial behaviour.
Liverpool's secret plan to get houses knocked down and
expand the stadium, which the residents had suspected from the beginning, was
exposed by a local free newspaper in September 1999. The club, with the council
and Arena, had produced Anfield Plus, a plan to demolish both rows of houses on
Lothair Road, the one on Alroy Road backing on to Lothair, and those on Anfield
Road, for two enlarged stands. In the wider area, 1,800 properties were
designated for demolition. A food, drink and retail area was planned on a
cleared corner across from the Kop and Centenary Stand. New social housing,
shops, a supermarket and community centre were also envisaged.
Shock at such a plan being conceived without discussion with
residents produced an outcry. The council did not support the plan with
compulsory purchase threats but instead embarked on a consultation process.
Rick Parry, Liverpool's then chief executive, acknowledged the club were
seeking a bigger Anfield to compete financially with Manchester United, but
said nevertheless: "I believe we can also work much better with the
community, be a good neighbour."
In the intense, often fraught discussions with residents,
some progress was slowly made. New homes were built or renovated, including the
Skerries Road terrace, behind Kemlyn Road, which Liverpool had previously
bought up and left blighted. Two health centres have been built and the new
Four Oaks primary school and North Liverpool Academy. Yet Lothair Road, Alroy
and Anfield Road, on which the club had set their sights, were left to rot.
While the Premier League, its club owners, players, managers
and agents were growing rich on pay-TV millions, right around one of its most
revered clubs there was squalor and horror. The many empty houses were
vandalised, robbed, stripped, set on fire. People living next door to
Liverpool's tinned-up houses told the club they feared waking up in the night
to find them ablaze. Still, the club did not put tenants in them. Some people
began to move out, their houses' value having tumbled, but many good people
stayed, determined not to be forced out.
Liverpool's switch to a plan for a wholly new stadium on
Stanley Park came partly out of the post-Anfield Plus community consultation.
In one meeting, Parry looked at a map and was struck by how hemmed in by houses
the ground would still be, even if expanded. Yet even as the plans developed
over years, many residents did not believe Liverpool would ever build a new
stadium. Partly this was because even after all the outcry over Anfield Plus,
Liverpool still bought houses on Lothair Road, including No10.
In October 1999, 33 Lothair Road, owned by Liverpool and
unoccupied, was set on fire, filling the house of the elderly couple who lived
next door with smoke and soot. Residents say that three people were killed, set
alight, in a horrific incident, in a house further along Lothair Road. A woman
reported to be renting on Lothair Road who worked as a prostitute was murdered,
in 2001.
A Lothair Road resident, who did not want to be named
because he is in negotiations with the council to finally leave, recalled his
elderly father going out to fill a coal bucket from the old-fashioned scuttle
under the front steps. Two tenants who had moved in across the road threw a
brick at his father's head. The resident went across the road, banged on both
doors, and roared at them to come out, which they did not.
"These are some of the drastic things we've had to
do," he said, talking on his doorstep. "I brought three children up
here. If Liverpool had been honest from the beginning, said they wanted our
houses to expand their ground, we're realistic, we know they're a huge football
club, most of us support them, deals could have been done. Instead they were
underhand, blighted the area and we've had to live like this for years."
The sorry saga of how the new stadium plans turned to dust
was played out in public, while residents suffered stagnation and wreckage. The
club had continued to buy houses on Anfield Road: No 65 in 2001, 47, 49 and 67
in 2007. Parry and the then majority shareholder, David Moores, believed they
needed rich owners to stand behind the borrowing required for a new stadium,
which could have been built in the early 2000s for perhaps £140m. It took years
before finally in 2007 they sold the club for £179m to the Americans Tom Hicks
and George Gillett. Moores personally made £89m.
Hicks famously promised "a spade in the ground"
and work to begin on the new stadium in 60 days, but he and Gillett had
borrowed the money to buy the club and were planning to borrow for the stadium
too, then could not. Under pressure from Royal Bank of Scotland, in October
2010 Hicks and Gillett were forced by court order to sell the club, John
Henry's FSG paying the £200m price of the RBS debt.
FSG, which renovated the Boston Red Sox stadium, Fenway
Park, rather than build a new one, suggested from the beginning it might scrap
the new stadium plan as too expensive. In October, Liverpool's managing
director, Ian Ayre, confirmed that, describing the intention to go back to
expanding Anfield as "a great leap forward".
FSG's current plan envisages expanding the Main and Anfield
Road stands, with both sides of Lothair Road, and one side of Alroy Road,
demolished. A hotel is proposed behind the enlarged Main Stand on the footprint
of Lothair Road's even side and Alroy, because a commercial property does not
have the same right to light as homes. A development, probably bars and
restaurants, with training promised for young people, is proposed opposite the
corner of the Kop and Centenary Stand. With Liverpool having purchased a whole
row on Anfield Road, they have already knocked those houses down, so there is
no obstacle to enlarging that stand.
This FSG plan, then, is strikingly similar to Anfield Plus,
which was worked up in 1999, then put on hold for 13 years in favour of the new
stadium proposal.
Ruth Little, of the Anfield and Breckfield community
council, says: "After people suffered so much, from the football club and
Your Housing leaving properties empty and blighting the area, when they went
back to the original plan I did wonder what the last 12 years of consultation
have been for.
"A lot of good work has been done, though, much of it
by local people volunteering. At least we have some certainty now, and we have to
make sure that the people who are left are treated with respect."
Reports on that are mixed. While many homeowners have sold
their houses over the years for little, the council's final offers now are more
generous. Some residents have settled for around £80,000, more than the houses
would have fetched on the market in such blighted conditions, and the council
is also providing interest-free loans. This enables those who own their own
homes to buy another similar house without taking on a new mortgage.
However, several people accuse the council, which is
negotiating via agents, of starting with low offers, forcing people in
difficult circumstances to negotiate hard or be seriously disadvantaged.
Bill Higham, who owns 25 Alroy Road, says he was offered
£55,000, which he refused outright, for a house he has had to refurbish twice
after it was seriously vandalised.
"I find it disgraceful," he says. "After the
way the area has been run down, I'm being forced out and they want the
properties for a song. They could pay everybody up, properly, for less than one
Liverpool player's wage."
Bill McGarry, vice-chair of the Anfield Rockfield Triangle
residents' association, a qualified town planner, has helped some residents
negotiate with the council. Patrick Duggan, chair of Artra, is an ardent critic
of the club, whom he vehemently accuses of running the area down. Duggan runs
Epstein House, a refurbished hotel in the old Anfield Road family home of the
Beatles' manager, Brian Epstein. Duggan bought it for £450,000, partly, he
says, because Liverpool were building a new stadium which would regenerate the
area. He has been shocked instead to find the area's degradation, then felt
betrayed when FSG scrapped the new stadium plan.
"I have always been a Liverpool fan," says Duggan,
who has mounted a campaign targeting Ayre. "They play 'You'll Never Walk
Alone' but they have left their neighbours to walk alone for years."
Paddy McKay, 58, a builder who has lived for 37 years on
Walton Breck Road, is refusing to accept the council's offer. He and his wife
Carol brought up three daughters there; he has paid his mortgage off in full
and argues that, if he is forced to move, he should be paid enough to buy a
similar house somewhere decent and compensation for the years of blight. Even
now, antisocial behaviour is continuing on those streets, including house
fires.
"Liverpool FC have said they want to be good
neighbours? They're the world's worst neighbours; they couldn't care
less," McKay says. "After all the damage they have done to the area,
they should do the decent thing by the residents."
James McKenna, chair of the Spirit of Shankly supporters'
union, says the fans have sympathy for the club's neighbours. "The stadium
expansion is all about the club making more money, and fans will have to pay
more for tickets," McKenna says. "To do that, Liverpool have played a
part in derelict houses, streets boarded up. It's a blot on LFC's record."
A council spokesman declined to discuss details of the
house-buying process. "Since last autumn we have been developing a robust
set of plans for the area which are absolutely on track," he said.
"This will include working with the local community on a blueprint for the
wider regeneration of Anfield."
Brian Cronin, chief executive of Your Housing, defended his
organisation's property stewardship in the area and said the group has invested
more than £23m in refurbishments or new homes around Anfield since 2009. Your
Housing has 22 properties on Lothair, Alroy and Sybil Roads behind the Main
Stand, of which 12 "are long-term vacant". Cronin said: "We are
currently working very closely with Liverpool city council and other partners
in Anfield to establish the best long-term future for these properties as part
of the wider regeneration of the area."
Liverpool declined to comment but last month Ayre updated
the Liverpool Daily Post, saying: "To extend Anfield, we need to acquire a
bunch of privately owned property around the stadium. We're making really good
progress with that. We said some months back it would take several months to
improve that property acquisition situation. We're definitely on target so
far."
Once the properties are bought, Ayre said, the club will
apply for planning permission. After that, the third challenge is to
"build the thing".
He told the Guardian in October that an expanded Anfield with
a 60,000 capacity will not allow cheaper tickets; its aim is to make more
money. Liverpool have employed PricewaterhouseCoopers to survey fans, and
corporate customers, to help plan price brackets for the new facilities.
Some fans wonder if FSG, which is quite remote as owner,
with Henry hardly in Liverpool and progress slow and costly, may sell the club,
particularly once planning permission has been secured. FSG and Henry have not
said that is a possibility. The stated plan is to expand the ground and enable
Liverpool to compete again by making more money, so attracting better players
by offering them huge wages on a par with the other top clubs.
Liverpool's remaining neighbours, suffering some of
Britain's worst living conditions, are grappling with hardball offers, to have
their houses knocked down and make way for it all. In the Premier League of the
21st century, this is Anfield.
By David Conn http://www.guardian.co.uk
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