Falconer Chester Hall has secured planning permission for an £80m flats development at a gateway site on the edge of Liverpool city centre.

Its 505-home Greenland Street proposals for city-based Legacie Developments will deliver the flats in four blocks of eight to 18 storeys on a 0.75ha site that falls within the buffer zone for Liverpool’s Unesco World Heritage Site and is around 300m from the city’s grade I-listed Anglican cathedral.

Controversially, the scheme will also require the removal of a park area that is home to a piece of artwork by Diller, Scofidio & Renfro that was commissioned for 2008’s Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art. The artwork – named “Arbores Laetae” or “Joyful Trees” – features 17 hornbeams that are planted in a grid, three of which rotate to disrupt the order. It is known locally as the “spinning trees”.

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