For most of the second half of the twentieth century, the area between Liverpool's Albert Dock waterfront and the Church Street shopping district was a wound. The May Blitz of 1941 hit Liverpool harder than almost any English city outside London, killing nearly 4,000 people and destroying much of the central retail core. Reconstruction afterwards was piecemeal — a few new buildings, a multi-storey car park, the Moat House Hotel, large empty surface lots. By the 1990s the area was an obvious candidate for major redevelopment, and Grosvenor, the property arm of the Duke of Westminster's estate, took it on. The brief was unusually thoughtful for a shopping development: 42 acres, mixed use, retail and residential and leisure, with public streets retained as actual public rights of way. The construction cost was £500 million. The total investment value reached £920 million. Work began with the excavation of Chavasse Park in spring 2004 and the topping-out of the John Lewis flagship in August 2006. The major retail phase opened on 29 May 2008, with the rest following on 1 October that year — during Liverpool's term as European Capital of Culture.

Grosvenor's masterstroke was refusing to design Liverpool ONE as one building. Instead, the 42 acres were divided into six districts, each given to a different architectural practice, with a shared masterplan from Allies and Morrison setting only the broad framework. The result is that walking through Liverpool ONE feels nothing like walking through a mall. Hanover Street uses existing older buildings, some formerly derelict, for an informal mix of homewares shops and street markets. Peter's Lane lays out fashion retail along narrow arcades and small squares connecting back to historic Church Street. New Manesty's Lane was meant to house Selfridges or Harvey Nichols but ended up with a Flannels flagship and a stand-alone Ermenegildo Zegna boutique — the only one in Britain outside London. Paradise Street is the wide pedestrianised spine where John Lewis sits at one end. South John Street, two storeys high and the heart of the shopping zone, has the 14-screen Odeon multiplex above its restaurants. And Chavasse Park rises in terraces over the top of a 3,000-space underground car park.

The park at the centre of the development is named for Noel Chavasse, a Liverpool-born army doctor who served as Medical Officer to the Liverpool Scottish in the First World War and is one of only three men in history to win the Victoria Cross twice — the second decoration awarded posthumously after he was killed at Passchendaele in August 1917 while rescuing wounded men under fire. His brother Aidan died in 1917 too. The Chavasse family's losses were extraordinary even by the standards of that war, and naming the park for them anchors Liverpool ONE to a specific local memory rather than a generic brand. Chavasse Park rises in terraces above South John Street, accessible from Strand Street via tunnels and ramps, with restaurants and the Odeon at the top. The Sugar House Steps, covered in green planting from spring to November, are popular as outdoor seating. Below it all sits the buried Old Dock — opened by Thomas Steers in 1715, the world's first commercial wet dock, filled in around 1826 when Liverpool's ships grew too big for it. The development preserved the dock walls and built a viewing chamber where visitors can stand on glass over the original masonry.

Liverpool ONE was not built without controversy. Critics pointed out that the new development pulled retail business away from Bold Street, Lewis's, Rapid Hardware, Cavern Walks, St John's Centre, and the Metquarter — established Liverpool shopping streets and centres that suffered visibly in the years after 2008. The streets within Liverpool ONE remain technically public rights of way, but they are also patrolled by private security under shared arrangements with Liverpool City Council, raising the perennial question of who really controls a public-feeling space when a single landlord owns the buildings. Defenders point to the numbers. Liverpool ONE lifted the city from outside the UK's top ten retail destinations into the top five within a few years of opening. The mix of architects produced a varied streetscape that has aged better than most early 2000s developments. The Odeon Liverpool ONE has more than 3,000 seats and 14 screens, the biggest cinema in the city. Around 170 stores and services trade there. In December 2024, Landsec bought the development from Grosvenor for a reported £490 million, valuing the whole project at roughly half what it cost to build but recognising it as a long-term institution. Liverpool ONE is now simply part of how the city works, the inevitable place a Saturday wanders into, the open-air heart that the May Blitz cleared the ground for and that the twenty-first century finally filled in.