Face the facts on the Futurist façade, say developers

The developer behind the £35m plan to reinvigorate Liverpool’s Lime Street has welcomed the decision by Save Britain’s Heritage to acknowledge that the structure of the distinctive Futurist cinema cannot be saved.

When the project to redevelop the street was first revealed, Heritage groups called for developers to preserve the façade of the former Futurist building. However, Liverpool City Council found that doing so would prove difficult due to the poor structural condition of the now-derelict building.

Commenting on the stance occupied by Save Britain’s Heritage, the director of Neptune Developments, Rob Mason, said: “We welcome the fact that that Save’s own structural engineers now concede that the body of the building is beyond repair and that the façade is in a dangerous condition with an imminent risk of collapse.

“However, to suggest that the façade can or should be retained on its own is both confusing and inconsistent. No-one has ever claimed that the façade cannot possibly be retained.”

He added: “Everything is possible, but in this case the cost would be excessive, the disruption enormous and the benefit in conservation terms negligible.”

Previous reports have investigated and rejected the idea of retaining the façade on the basis that the cost would be in excess of £2.5m, with no guarantee that the structure would remain intact due to the brittle concrete tiles.

Further, developers found that efforts to preserve the Futurist would require a large part of Lime Street to be closed for more than a year.

Rob continued: “We have surely reached a point where everyone needs to face facts and get on with a development that is long overdue.

“It is also becoming difficult to understand what Save can hope to achieve beyond publicity and further delays to a much needed regeneration project.”

In an older design proposal for the Lime Street development from 2006, the possibility of retaining the façade was rejected by English Heritage.

Writing to the then architect, English Heritage said: “As the Lime Street properties, between the two listed pubs, have been assessed and considered not to be of listable quality, we would not advocate the retention of the façade of the Futurist”

Speaking further, Rob said he believes façadism – the practice of preserving the front of an old building while demolishing the rest – is an “increasingly contentious and questionable approach to conservation”.

He explained: “In a letter to The Guardian newspaper in August 2014, Clem Cecil, the then director of Save, described façade retention as ‘tokenism at its worst, treating architecture in only two dimensions’ and labelling it ‘the bastard child of conservationism’.

“I can’t see how they can now seriously seek to impose this flawed approach on Liverpool.”

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