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BY GLENN FRANKEL
Washington Post
LIVERPOOL, England — Two decades ago, when this seaport city was mired in a deep and seemingly endless recession, Mike Byrne, a local musician and businessman, sought public funds to help build an exhibition dedicated to Liverpool's most famous native sons, the Beatles.
He argued that the city could capitalize on the group's enduring popularity to attract tourists, but he recalls getting nowhere. "Tourism wasn't in the dictionary of the city fathers," Byrne said.
That was then. These days Liverpool is staging a rousing comeback. After decades of economic decline and social unrest, this proud, prickly and distinctive city is undergoing a full-scale revival that is cultural as well as financial. And tourism is at the heart of the boom.
In the past four years, a city that once hemorrhaged employment and investment has experienced the creation of 50,000 jobs, an increase of 9 percent per year. Its economy has grown at 5 percent annually per capita, and tourism is expanding at a similar pace. For the first time since the 1930s, Liverpool's population — which sank from 800,000 to 450,000 — has registered a small increase.
Those are the numbers. What's equally important, city leaders contend, is the revival of Liverpool's spirit. The birthplace of the Beatles boasts more Victorian-era public buildings than any city outside of London, Britain's largest cathedral, two nationally known soccer teams, three universities and a half-dozen major museums. Liverpool has been designated as the European Union's Capital of Culture for 2008, and it is wasting no time in claiming the title.
What's happening reflects changes all over the north of England, where cities such as Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield and Newcastle are staging comebacks after suffering steep declines as Britain's manufacturing and mining industries collapsed or faded. The buoyancy of Britain's economy, which has been on a 10-year rising tide, and the transformation wrought by high-tech, tourism and service industries, plus an influx of immigrants from South Asia, has meant a rebirth for England's most economically battered region.
No place fell farther or faster than Liverpool, and none has climbed back with quite the same spirited and self-conscious determination.
"We're seeing a renaissance, and it's very infectious," said Mike Storey, head of the city council. "Anyone who comes here can't help but be caught up in the experience. We've got our flair and our self-confidence back."
Once known as the "Second City of the Empire," Liverpool rose on the shoulders of the slave, cotton and sugar trades in the 18th and 19th centuries to become one of the world's dominant seaports and commercial centers. Banks and insurance companies reigned for decades. The Cunard Steamship Co. and the White Star Line, owner of the Titanic, were headquartered in Liverpool. Shipping money built the vast Albert Dock warehouses of cast-iron and red brick on the Mersey River in the 1840s. That money also built the Three Graces — three grandiose office buildings that took over the Merseyside skyline in the early 1900s.
Liverpool also became a melting pot. Welshmen escaping rural poverty, Scotsmen pouring down from the north and Irishmen arriving aboard ferries from across the Irish Sea flocked to Liverpool's teeming docksides. A smattering of black slaves freed by King George III for siding with the British during the American Revolution also settled here.
The city boasts its own rhythmic accent, known as Scouse, and its own attitude — wry, defiant and self-deprecating. "What do you call a Liverpudlian in a tie?" goes a local joke. Answer: "The defendant."
"Liverpool always sees itself as apart from the rest of the country," said Spencer Leigh, a local author and broadcaster for BBC Radio Merseyside. "We look out at the Atlantic, and away from the rest of Britain. And I suppose when you set yourself up like that then you're there to be knocked down."
The revival, people say, was slow and hesitant. Some trace its origins to the renovation of the Albert Dock area, which has become a smaller version of Baltimore's Inner Harbor, and the formation of the Merseyside Partnership, a quasi-public nonprofit body, to press redevelopment projects. Others point to a more elusive phenomenon: the magnetic power of the Beatles.
These days there are local tours of Beatle sites, an annual Beatles week in August that draws tens of thousands, and nightly performances at the reconstructed Cavern Club, where the group got its start. The city's airport has been expanded and renamed after John Lennon. And the Beatles Story, the exhibition that Byrne eventually built with private funds at Albert Dock, is the region's 10th-largest paid-admission attraction.
Official figures indicate the Beatles account for about 10 percent of the tourism income pouring into Liverpool each year, but they helped provide a spark for other investment. The European Union has provided more than $2 billion over a decade for infrastructure improvements such as the airport. Irish investors have poured in another $2 billion. The city center has undergone extensive renovation and a commercial building boom.
"No doubt we're part of a rising tide throughout the United Kingdom," said Thomas O'Brien, director of the Merseyside Partnership. "But Liverpool's economy has become more competitive. We're less vulnerable to downturns in the cycle."
The birthplace of the Beatles boasts more Victorian-era public buildings than any city outside of London, Britain's largest cathedral, two nationally known soccer teams, three universities and a half-dozen major museums.
Beatles tourism sparks Liverpool\'s comeback
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