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Kazimier Garden: Cut down in its prime?

By on February 12, 2014

kazimier-gardenThe writing’s on the wall for the Kazimier Gardens, after the area - which includes the Liverpool Academy of Arts - has been earmarked for student flats.

TJ Thomas Estates Group, a Liverpool company, has bought the courtyard cluster of buildings at 36 Seel Street, where The Actors Studio, Matt Ford Photography and Seel Street Massage are based, as well as 11-23 Seel Street opposite and a warehouse on Wolstenholme Square next to Cream, which includes the Kazimier Garden.

The TJ Thomas group’s portfolio already features nine student flat developments across the city, as well as apartment blocks and offices.

The future of the Liverpool Academy of Arts is in now doubt after its building has been sold for potential redevelopment. TJ Thomas Estates Group has offered the gallery a new home.

The developer has promised new bars and restaurants will rise from the ashes - and that they’re in talks with the Kazimier. The venue, they say, could be an anchor tenant but, at this stage, nothing is certain. And to hear developer, Director David Mahoney talk of ‘urban bar restaurants’ in The Echo, sort of makes our blood run cold.

Let’s hope the garden is spared the wrecking ball, and we keep at least a part of Seel Street magical.

UPDATE: Kazimier has confirmed that they’re staying ‘the ground is shifting around us, but we’re staying where we are,’ they say.

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  • Linziloop

    Three words spring to my head when I read this. For fucks sake. I’m not usually one for swearing but I’m getting really sick of Liverpools demolishing of anything with a bit of character, ESPECIALLY to make way for yet MORE student accommodation.

  • RIchard MacDonald

    Oh just fuck off.

  • sue

    Oh no. We just seem to be losing anything that has a bit of character in Liverpool.

  • Andrew

    Kazimier Gardens is brilliant, this is terrible news :(

  • Jenna Maddocks

    Money money money! Absolute fucking joke, if anything they should flatten concert square and build their shitty student flats there!

  • John Fox

    Bad news! One of Liverpool’s finest venues, even in Winter when it’s chilly! More student flats, boooo!!!!

  • Paul Riley

    Why would students want to come to a city that kills anything interesting? How many revolution vodka bars are there? How many Kazimiers?

  • Tristan Brady-Jacobs

    The council needs to grow a pair and proactively protect and nurture the unique and the idiosyncratic. We cannot expect developers to find or care about their consciences or their sense of civic duty - theyre developers and therefore fundamenatlly incapable of appreciating or servicing the needs of the people. The council are supposed to represent these needs, but they seem incapable of understanding the concept of a healthy diversity and are encouraging the creation of a monocultural community of single bedrooms with the plastic retail outlets to service them. No wonder we have the lowest rate of student retention of any city university in this country. As soon as cheap alcohol and drugs and a subway breakfast become less than the centre of your universe youll look around and realise this is NOT a city for the discerning young adult, or any kind of sophisticated human. Some of us continue cling to the city with hope and penury, but each time this happens its another knife cut to the body of our loyalty.

  • Pretzel

    There’s only one thing wrong with this. There is no suggestion that the Kazimier Garden will close. Maybe ask them next time?

  • Steve

    Do they just want the city to be full of students? Surely they’re only going to push us all out if they keep building pointless accommodation (they must have more than enough!! Especially considering intake of students is going down due to fee rising!) and closing down places we actually want to go!! Shut everything down and it’ll just become a city of students and tourists! …

  • angrymouse

    Folks the council wont do much about this unles you all pull your fingers out and take action! They haven’t got plannig pernission for this yet so when they submit the application it will go on the council’s website and you can all object.

  • thewilk

    Must be fun to be a student these days, roll out of bed into your lecture theatre via Costa and Wetherspoons without ever having to even get on a bus or rub shoulders with any local oiks.

  • david_lloyd

    But the Academy of Arts will, and potentially the warren of studios at 33 Seel Street. It’s bigger than the garden, this development will permanently alter the character of this area. And I doubt for the better. Great that the garden, it seems, is staying. But for how long?

  • http://plumpergeddon.tumblr.com/ Plumpergeddon

    Turn Concert Square into student halls instead?

  • N

    Student numbers dipped after the intro of fee rises but this year they increased again

  • goldenblls

    Concert Square is one if the worst places in the city, with a reputation that goes far and wide across the land, and the last thing the city needs is more of the same - hundreds of drunken twats ready to kick off any minute. Friday and Saturday night is almost a no go area.

    The character of the area is one that has developed organically, not designed or created by another faceless developer.

  • mark

    gobshite

  • George Sewell

    That is an interesting stat about having the lowest retention rate, where is it from? I was always under the impression, both from personal experience and data I had seen that it was pretty high, 60% has been mentioned in a couple of pieces I have seen

  • Tristan Brady-Jacobs

    Good Question. I bandy this stat about and have forgotten where I first read it. Damn… This link is similar but without the demographic detail I remember, but it puts retention much lower than 60% (45-50) and the difference between us and the core group at 2-3.
    http://www.centreforcities.org/assets/files/09-10-29%20Growing%20by%20degrees_Liverpool.pdf

  • George Sewell

    That link is from 2009 using data from 2006/07, ergo students that made their choices in around 2002. Before capital of culture and much of our major regeneration. Even the the article actually says we were second in the country with 45% retention . Moving on now to current statistics and school leavers who made their choices post 2008 and we have moved up to 60% and the best in the country.
    http://www.ropewalksliverpool.com/blog/view/iliad-to-begin-wor-on-new-20m-rope walks-project.
    So despite your very eloquent post it was factually very badly wrong old chap.
    It seems to me everyone needs to see what happens with this before we call foul. This part of town is crying out for an injection of something.

  • Tristan Brady-Jacobs

    Thanks George. Do you have a link to the contemporary stats you quote? I still contend, tho, that we have a struggle to match other cities on the cutural front right now. Ropewalks is a mess isnt it? A mixture of hi-priced lo-moralled alcohol pits and land grabs and mismanagement. The recent farrago over mello mello and the kazimier, the foul state of concert square and the seemingly endless need for single bedroomed pod blocks.Its funny that the link you posted has a gallery front end that leads with Concert Sq? Its a petty squalid place in the evening and on hot summer days teems with lary lads and lasses. The continental vision posted must have been taken a long time ago when it hosted brouhaha and was a relaxed urbane place. Now, I know of performers from other countries who have refused to perform in such a place and its grim - daytime its like a club in daytime - sticky floors, empty and lonely whee the staff stare long and hard as you walk past. To cap it all my son was stabbed in the neck in this square - by a coked up pissed moron. Bold St - 3 committees, agendas everywhere, mixed messages - up n down on the event front (the one world fest was good but 1st good event for a while…). And finally wolstenholme sq - is this a joke? We still don’t know if we’re going to have mellomello and the kaz or some much needed single apartment pods. Arts academy is going, creative spaces gone - but we do have a sex club for local youth job opps - yay! btw that site - ropewalks - if we’re going to pitch up our city against some very savvy others we should have one thats been updated since 2012 dont you think? Still, there will be another tescos along in a short while…