A property boss sent emails to the former chief executive of Liverpool City Council about the city's Festival Gardens site.
The emails reveal messages between Jonathan Falkingham, founder of regeneration firm Urban Splash, and Tony Reeves. Mr Reeves stepped down from his chief executive role last month.
Now Liverpool Council has released email exchanges between the Mr Falkingham and Mr Reeves in response to a recent Freedom of Information Act request. The information released by the council reveal emails from Mr Falkingham to Mr Reeves about the city's sprawling Festival Gardens site.
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Liverpool Council bought the site for around £6m in 2015. A scheme to build over 1000 new homes is set to be delivered by ION Developments Limited and Midia Group. The companies won the tender from the council in 2018.
In January 2019 Mr Falkingham emailed Mr Reeves in which he described the Festival Gardens site as 'the best in Liverpool.' He said: "Our view is that it is the best site in Liverpool - in a city region where nearly 30km of shoreline is dominated by historic docklands and quaysides on both the Liverpool and Wirral sides, this is unique river city parkland -the like of which does not exist in any other city were are aware of."
However Mr Falkingham proceeded to express a degree of frustration with the tender process. He said: "The next stage was quite loose and we were concerned about investing time effort and money without a clear process."
He added: "I raised my concerns about this at my first meeting with LCC. We were told that this market exercise was not a formal procurement process and that LCC wanted to understand possible approaches before deciding on a way forward."
Festival Gardens was used as a maritime waste dump after World War II until the 1980s, when it became the centre of Tory minister Michael Heseltine's efforts to regenerate Merseyside.
Made up of 60 separate gardens by the time they opened in 1984, the Festival Gardens were the centre of the 1984 International Garden Festival.
But the site slowly fell out of use after the festival finished, with the gardens falling into disrepair and the central dome eventually being torn down in 2006. The council bought the vast site recognising its potential as a major visitor destination. The site required a large scale remediation process when 380,000 cubic metres of waste material was removed.
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