Technology is crucial to the resurgence of Liverpool.
That was the message from Colin Sinclair, chief executive of Liverpool Knowledge Quarter, which aims to be one of the world’s leading innovation districts.
Sinclair, who is the former chief executive of MIDAS and remains the chairman of Bruntwood – which is using VR to show off office space – in Liverpool, was speaking at the latest meeting of the Forum for the Built Environment at Exchange Station.
He gave details of Paddington Village, a £1bn flagship expansion site that will house 1.8m square feet of science, technology, education and health space and has been inspired by Greenwich Village in New York.
Sinclair told BusinessCloud: “The link between creative, media, digital and big computing is where Liverpool can actually march ahead.
“If we can join that academic expertise in technology and data to this pool of exciting emerging SMEs then I think that gives Liverpool a unique proposition.”
Sinclair thinks that the amount of available land in the city gives Liverpool a real edge over other areas in attracting inward investment.
“Liverpool has got land,” said Sinclair. “There is still space in the city to regenerate and thanks to the vision of the mayor and city council they have gathered together 30 acres of land to create an urban village.”
This urban village is the new £1bn Paddington Village development that is at the heart of the Knowledge Quarter’s plans for the future.
“It is actually too good to be true,” Sinclair said of Paddington Village.
“It joins on to the new hospital site where they’re building the new Royal and Clatterbridge hospitals and it’s directly adjoined to the university campus, particularly the life sciences, the veterinary school, the chemistry school. So it’s really embedded in to the knowledge quarter.”