Planning application submitted for Kings Waterfront hotels
A detailed planning application has been submitted for a 310-bedroom '3 star plus' Jurys Inn hotel and a 132-suite BDL Staybridge Hotel at Kings Waterfront, Liverpool.
The planning application for the hotels, designed by Belfast-based architects Urban Innovations, has been submitted to Liverpool City Council by hotel operator Jurys Doyle and developer and contractor McAleer and Rushe. The detailed application follows from the grant of outline planning consent in December 2004.
Kings Waterfront is the single largest development site in Liverpool city centre. A partnership of Liverpool Vision, national regeneration agency English Partnerships, Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA), the European Objective One Programme and Liverpool City Council is jointly promoting its development.
The aim is to create a visitor destination of international quality combining arena, conference and exhibition facilities - a centrepiece for Capital of Culture celebrations in 2008 - with a development of residential, hotel, office, retail, leisure, community and open space uses.
Developer and contractor for the hotel scheme is Northern Ireland based firm McAleer and Rushe Ltd, a company which has vast experience in hotel construction and has built over 6,500 hotel rooms in the last ten years.
With operations in the UK, Ireland and the USA, Jurys Doyle Hotel Group currently successfully operate nineteen Inns and seventeen hotels, and the 310-bedroom Jurys Inn Liverpool will include a business suite of meeting rooms to complement the facilities provided by the Liverpool Arena and Convention Centre (LACC), which is currently under construction. Bars, restaurants and ground level retail units will provide an active and permeable frontage onto the adjoining public piazza.
The suites in the Staybridge Hotel offer a choice of hotel on the site and are designed to cater for the longer stay guest, within the tourist and business markets.
Speaking on behalf of the Kings Waterfront Partnership, Liverpool Vision Chief Executive, Jim Gill said: "Kings Waterfront will play a vital role in the future prosperity of the city and the region, and the hotel scheme in turn is a key component in its development, and will have a particularly important relationship with the success of the adjoining arena and convention centre. We are delighted that the scheme has now reached the detailed application stage."
Eliot Lewis-Ward, English Partnerships' Area Director (Merseyside and Cheshire), said: "This is another key milestone in the regeneration of Kings Waterfront, which is excellent news. As well as creating new jobs, these new developments could also potentially provide accommodation for more than 800 visitors to the city during the 2008 celebrations, become a focal point of the city and help attract even more investment."
Commenting on the planning application, Pat McCann, Chief Executive of Jurys Doyle Hotel Group said, "Liverpool is enjoying extensive regeneration at present and a new Jurys Inn will make a major contribution to the development of the city. We are delighted to be involved in such an exciting proposal and look forward to the opening of Jurys Inn Liverpool in time for the Capital of Culture celebrations in 2008.
"With nineteen Inns, and a further three under development, Jurys Inns have proved to be extremely successful in other UK cities, and this proposal, within the overall Kings Waterfront development, will contribute dramatically to the revitalisation of this area."
Eamonn Laverty, Managing Director of McAleer and Rushe Ltd. said: "This is a huge milestone on our way to undertaking the development of the hotels. We look forward to working with the Planning Department to see the scheme through to approval and would like to acknowledge the help and assistance received from the King's Waterfront team to date."
Developers hope that planning permission will be granted this summer with construction work beginning soon after. Completion of the Jurys Inn is scheduled for January 2008 with the Staybridge hotel being completed soon after in Spring 2008.