Plans approved for three new Liverpool hotels
COUNCILLORS in Liverpool gave the green light to plans for three new hotels yesterday which will boost the number of rooms in the city by 8%.
Proposals from Premier Inn, FourtwoFour – a subsidiary of the Irish property group Benmore – and quoted property group Quintain Estates will add a further 341 hotel bedrooms to the city’s existing stock of 4,246.
Premier Inn, owned by Whitbread, agreed a deal with Grosvenor earlier this year to build a hotel at the entrance to the Liverpool One shopping centre on Hanover Street. Premier plans to invest £12m on the 183-bedroom, five-storey hotel.
It has taken the freehold on the 100,000 sq ft and plans to occupy 76,000 sq ft on floors two to five and hand back 24,000 sq ft on the lower floors to Grosvenor. It should take 15 months to build and is scheduled to open in Autumn 2012.
Quintain Estates wants to convert a building in Stanley Street into a 35-bedroom hotel, while FourtwoFour is to build a £10m, 123-bedroom hotel on Dale Street for Ibis.
The plan, which also includes a 285-space multi-storey car park, involves demolishing several buildings within the World Heritage Site but retaining the facades.
It has attracted strong criticism from Merseytravel, which said the car park would have a negative impact on public transport, and the car park company NCP which argued the scheme would cut available office space and lead to over provision of parking spaces. English Heritage initially objected but revised its position following changes.
In a report ahead of yesterday’s meeting planning officers said: “It is considered that the harm to and loss of the heritage assets is outweighed by the benefits of bringing the site back into use. The re-use of this site maximises opportunities for introducing commercial and employment generating activities into the area, contributing to the economic and physical regeneration of this part of the city centre.”
