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Everton stadium set to deliver huge tourism boost for Liverpool

Everton’s state-of-the-art new stadium will deliver a significant tourism boost to Liverpool, a city-based tourism director has claimed.

Everton last month revealed the first images of its proposed new 52,000-seat stadium, which will be built on the Bramley-Moore Dock site in Liverpool. The club hopes to move into the stadium in time for the 2023-24 season.

Chris Brown, director of Marketing Liverpool, a division of Liverpool City Council, has backed up claims made in a recent report by property consultancy CBRE that the stadium will deliver an additional 1.4 million visitors to the city each year.

“This is a significant project for the city, with a stamp of distinctiveness that will help Everton stand out and to my mind enhance the riverside cityscape as well,” Brown said, according to the Liverpool Echo newspaper.

“It’s a design and a concept that I’ve never seen anywhere else with any other stadium development and it will be a big draw beyond football and great credit is due to all those involved – it’s mind blowing. Liverpool is already a hugely popular tourist destination and there is no doubt that the new stadium combined with the way the club hopes to reimagine Goodison Park will boost our reputation further.”

Brown added: “Increasingly now visitors want to come not only to experience the match, but also to experience stadium environments, to experience the locations and the atmosphere, and I’ve no doubt that a waterfront location and its close proximity to the city centre will prove very compelling to visitors and to the great offer we already have.

“For the city it’s really important to stay competitive in a global marketplace so this will improve our visitor economy, the investment economy and the economy of the city. And yet, it’s more than that – in terms of the next stages of development for the city, it’s huge, especially in growing the city centre while being a catalyst for regeneration in north Liverpool and I think it’s going to be brilliant for the city.”

It has also been estimated that the stadium will deliver an economic boost worth £1bn (€1.1bn/$1.2bn), with the potential of up to 15,000 jobs being created.

Everton’s second public consultation phase for its proposed new stadium concluded at the weekend. The consultation gathered fans’ views on the project and allows supporters the chance to sample a virtual-reality experience providing 360-degree views of the venue.

The results and feedback generated from the consultation will form part of Everton’s final submission for planning applications for the stadium and the regeneration project at Goodison Park, the club’s current home. Everton plans on submitting applications by the end of 2019.

Earlier this month, architecture firm Pattern was drafted in to help fine-tune the design of the stadium. Pattern, which worked on eight projects relating to the 2019 Pan American Games in Lima and is the lead designer and architect for Qatar’s Al Rayyan Stadium, will work with renowned US architect Dan Meis on the Everton project.

Image: Everton FC