Rock landmark at risk of becoming boomtown flats

By Steve Bird / The Times

ONE of Liverpool’s cultural landmarks is under threat from the city’s selection as European City of Culture. Parr Street Studio, a converted 19th-century warehouse that helped to create the Britpop movement and where Coldplay, Pulp, the Stereophonics and the Charlatans recorded, may be converted into flats.

The threat comes from an earlier generation of rock stars, Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks of Genesis, who have applied for a conversion to 41 luxury flats worth millions to profit from the property boom generated by Liverpool’s status as the 2008 City of Culture.

For the past 12 years the three-studio complex, the largest in the city and the biggest outside London, has been used by Diana Ross, Feeder, the Beautiful South, Teenage Fanclub and Embrace. Other artists and groups to have recorded there include Barry Manilow, Sleeper, Björk, Simply Red and Take That.

Ken Nelson, a music producer who has won three Grammy awards during his time at Parr Street after working on Coldplay’s hit albums Parachutes and A Rush of Blood to the Head, said: “To lose the studios would be a great shame.” He added that if the studios closed, musicians would have no reason to come to Liverpool to record. The city’s rock heritage has helped to increase visitor numbers, and many music tours, which centre on the Cavern Club, where the Beatles played, include Parr Street.

Thomas Laing, a singer and producer who made the video that helped Liverpool to become City of Culture, said that he wanted to meet Collins to try to persuade him to abandon the plans to scrap the studio. “We don’t have the power to stop them selling the building to a developer,” he said. “There is a huge gulf between us and him and his group, he may not even know what is being proposed for the studio.”

Warren Bradley, Liverpool City Council’s executive member for culture, said: “The loss of Parr Street would be desperately sad. In my opinion the city centre does not need any more developments of flats. I want these creative people to continue to come to Liverpool and if the worst comes to the worst we must do our best to help to relocate people.”

The value of Parr Street has risen with two redevelopments in the area, a £750 million project by the Duke of Westminster and another called Ropewalks. Speculators have been buying old warehouses near the docks. The planning application has been postponed until councillors have visited the site, which could be worth £1.5 million. A spokesman for Collins’s property company, Hit and Run, said it was in disrepair and much of it was not used.

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