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.
English Premier League │ Guardian.co.uk 