Not that we’d ever stoop to using outdated regional stereotyping in a serious post about European regneration grants but I’m sure that car owning away fans who travel to Anfield ever other Saturday could be rather pleased to hear that the area around Stanley Park and the surrounding area will be getting a major facelift with a ?9m grant from the European Objective One project.

Liverpool Football Club guaranteed ?160m of investment in a new stadium and the Objective One committee couldn’t wait to write out a cheque for a further ?9m to pay for restoration of Stanley Park, where the new Liverpool stadium will be built, and the creation of a shop-lined plaza on the site of the current Anfield ground.

None of the ?9m will actually be spent on the ground itself but there will be a few “calm down’s” heard in the vicinity this evening as the locals get wind of the regeneration plans for their area.

Liverpool and Objective One really do have to be congratulated on this initiative though because in this day and age of new, out of town, soulless stadia it’s good to see a football club staying close to it’s roots and helping improve the local area for the local people who have been it’s main supporters over the years. Too many clubs are desperate to get out of their old environment and into a shiny new stadium so as to attract more corporate sponsors but at least in Liverpool they’ll get a new stadium instead of their park and a new row of shops.

Should Everton be jealous?

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 28th, 2006 at 1:12 pm and is filed under Liverpool. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.