Penny Lane redevelopment awarded lottery funding

For the past 10 years, there have been discussions about building a new community centre on Grove Mount, based on Penny Lane. The Penny Lane Development Trust (PLDT) was established to oversee this project, and they have been appealing for money since then. The Millennium Green was created to provide a public park, but news of the new centre never surfaced. However, after applying many times for Lottery funding, the PLDT was awarded £760,000 to make their dream a reality.

The Liverpool Daily Post & Echo carried the news on 16th June that Liverpool City Council was supporting this project, and that they wanted there to be a community centre, Beatles museum and coach park to enable visitors to "stop and say hello!" The Local councillors want to promote the Penny Lane area as a "Beatles Quarter" and get tourists to stop and follow a heritage trail, and hopefully contribute to our Penny Lane area.

This would be great news for the area, but it has to be done right. At present, only private Beatles Tours stop at Smithdown Place—the correct name for the Penny Lane roundabout—because the Magical Mystery Tour bus and others have nowhere to stop, so they can only drive past.

However, this is not as straightforward as it sounds, because the article in the press yesterday carried several inaccuracies which I have corrected with the local councillor, and hopefully I will be involved in this project to make sure that they don't make a mess of it! My 8 years researching my book has corrected many inaccuracies I had read, and I don't want tourists to be misled.

The Penny Lane area, here beneath the blue suburban skies, is a great district of Liverpool that has been my home for the past 20 years, and this development would be brilliant—as long as we get it right! It's in my ears and in my eyes, and I want it to be in fan's eyes too!

Sgt Pepper's- closed - Penny Lane
Photo by Neill Shenton

© 2010 British Beatles Fan Club