Littlewoods is full steam ahead. But it doesn’t have any tenants

It was meant to transform Liverpool into the ‘Hollywood of the North’. Will it ever see the light of day?

Dear readers — in 2015 Liverpool had an opportunity. A big one. Plans were drawn up to turn the Littlewoods Building on Edge Lane — once home to the city’s old business paterfamilias, the Littlewoods football pools empire — into a massive film studio.

According to one source who spoke to The Post, it was the biggest development opportunity for the city in decades. And if you were to read any of the endless press releases from the time, you’d have learnt that Liverpool — already the most filmed British city outside London — was to become the Hollywood of the North.

But this is Liverpool, and things are rarely so simple. The so-called Littlewoods Project has been a case of lights, camera, inaction. Sure, there’s been bad luck, not least the massive fire that swept part of the building in 2018. But nine years after the plans first emerged and Liverpool, well, it isn’t Hollywood yet.

If you want to find out more about Liverpool’s chances of becoming the ‘Hollywood of the North’, then you’ll have to sign up to The Post. It costs only £7 a month (which is probably cheaper than a small tub of popcorn at Vue) and it helps fund our coterie of A-list talent, as well as all the other less Hollywood costs associated with local journalism (the lawyers, the energy costs, the instant coffee and the like). It’s only because of our paying subscribers that we’re able to keep doing this kind of work — please support us.

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Your Post briefing

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The Black Boy. Photograph: Archivart/Alamy.

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And wonderful news for Liang Zhang, owner of jewellery brand Robin Valley in Merseyside, after he secured a £50,000 investment from the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund to expand Robin Valley’s operations and hire more staff. You may remember Liang’s tumultuous journey in the world of business from Abi’s interview with him last year — Liang had previously tried his hand at setting up takeaways, creating food brands and running education websites, all of which failed within a matter of years. It’s seventh? (eighth? ninth?) time lucky for Zhang!

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Littlewoods is full steam ahead. But it doesn’t have any tenants

By Jack Walton

“To put it frankly, Littlewoods was the biggest development opportunity for this city in decades.” I’m talking to a big-name Liverpool developer, about a big-name Liverpool development. He doesn’t want to be named, but he does want to voice frustration. “I don’t think all is lost. But something has been. The opportunity that was there 10 years ago has been lost, for sure.”

If you were to create a Top Trumps set for stalled Liverpool developments, the Littlewoods Project — with its dreams of transforming the burnt-out art deco former HQ of the Littlewoods football pools empire on Edge Road into nation-leading film studio space — might be the best card in the pack. 

It would score well by all the necessary metrics. The grand scale of the ambition: reimagining one of the city’s most iconic buildings into a massive film studio complex, with cinemas, sound stages and all the trimmings. The sheer importance of getting it right: here was a chance to steal a march on a burgeoning market and raise Liverpool’s cultural heft significantly. And, inevitably, the jarring gulf between rhetoric and results: this was meant to transform Liverpool into the “Hollywood of the North”, you might remember. Even the greatest optimists among us would probably now argue that tag seems a little bombastic. 

Grand designs for the Littlewoods building. Image: Capital & Centric.

Here’s the good news: the above developer tells me the mood around Littlewoods at the moment is “bullish”. News at the end of last year that remediation work has finally begun has raised hopes that the neverending saga may have an end in sight. There are diggers and portacabins on site, dual markers that something is happening. Several people I speak to tell me they're pleasantly surprised we’ve even made it this far.

And here’s the bad news. As things stand, the project has no major tenants lined up. The loss of Liverpool John Moores University in October 2022 drew a lot of attention. The Echo called it a “huge blow”. But the loss of Twickenham Studios, one of the UK’s oldest studios and the other of the project's all-important “anchor tenants” has drawn comparatively no attention. 

It’s not that Capital & Centric, the developers, have tried to hide this. They spoke about it at a consultation event for Littlewoods last year, saying that while Twickenham are no longer “locked in” they remain interested and talks are ongoing. Nonetheless, it’s never once been reported in the press. And it raises major question marks over the whole development.