Work begins on special Shankly hotel

The Shankly Hotel will be a luxury, 83-bedroom, football-themed venue on Victoria Street upon completion of a multi-million pound redevelopment.

A joint venture between Signature Living Developments and the surviving Shankly family, the project could create more than 200 new jobs.

The hotel will house a museum dedicated to one of the game's greatest icons, a man who revolutionised Liverpool in his 15 years at the helm.

Never-before-seen family memorabilia from Shankly's successful Anfield reign will form part of the collection and help forge a permanent tribute to his life.

With a bar and sports-themed restaurant also planned within the site transformation, the Shankly Hotel is scheduled to open later this year.

Lawrence Kenwright, Signature Living owner, said: "Having spent many hours with the Shankly family, I have come to realise just how amazing Bill Shankly as a manager was.

"There is a great story behind the legend and I believe the team at Signature Living are perfectly placed to deliver it.

"This won't just be a hotel for fans of Liverpool Football Club, because Bill Shankly is a name that is respected by fans of sport the world over.

"He is an icon in the world of football. His fantastic story will be told at the Shankly Hotel to give guests a sense of his greatest achievements.

"The Shankly Hotel development will also further regenerate a key part of Liverpool city centre and create hundreds of local jobs."

Explaining how the idea for the project came about, Kenwright added: "It started a couple of years ago when Chris [Shankly's grandson] came to meet me with the idea of a Shankly museum and we very quickly got on to the view that it would be best suited as a hotel with the idea of having a museum aspect to the hotel.

"The museum aspect would house all of the memorabilia that Chris and his family has, and it will also be amazing to have Chris here on a daily basis as a direct descendant of Bill and all the stories he has got to share with football fans.

"We will be the largest accommodation provider in the city when the building is finished. This will serve the city of Liverpool as an amazing tourist attraction in itself."

Chris Shankly-Carline, the Scot's grandson, is collaborating with Signature Living on the project and explained why it is so exciting to see work start.

"The Shankly family is really proud to be working with Signature Living to make the Shankly Hotel a reality," he commented.

"It will be the ultimate tribute to my grandfather. We're hoping to create an unforgettable experience for visitors to the hotel and have identified some truly unique, unseen pieces of memorabilia from within the family collection to display."

To see this project coming to life is a labour of love for Shankly-Carline and he can't wait to see the end product.

He added: "The initial idea for this project came from myself a number of years ago.

"As a Liverpool fan who goes to the game every week and seeing the amount of people who come into the city, and coupled with the fact the family have got a lot of memorabilia which is unseen by fans, we just thought a Shankly hotel would be a major draw for the city.

"The whole of my grandfather's ethos was for the people and to make the people happy and everything we do with this hotel will be geared towards exactly that.

"We want to deliver an unbelievable experience for fans on a matchday and they can learn more about Shankly because there's a wealth of untold stories that the family have got as well which no one has ever covered, so we want to try and bring some of that to life in the hotel and celebrate his legacy and celebrate his achievement."

So what would the great man himself say about this project?

He added: "It's funny as I always talk to my mum about this because my grandfather wasn't shy and liked to get his photo on things and I think secretly he would have enjoyed it, but on a serious note so long as it was giving the fans a great experience then anything that does that would have been fine by him and he would have been fully on board with it."