New waterfront hotel for Gloucester

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Thursday, 16 January 2020 20:53

By Leigh Boobyer - Local Democracy Reporter

© Copyright Nick Mutton and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

The next steps to turn three historic warehouses in Gloucester into a waterfront hotel were approved yesterday.

Gloucester City Council has decided to transform the vacant Herbert, Kimberley and Phillpotts Warehouses overlooking the main basin into a new hotel for the city, after filtering five bids into three hotel-only offers.

The authority has confirmed it has a preferred bidder to carry out the work.

Dowdeswell Estates, known for its work at No 131 in Cheltenham and currently restoring The Fleece Hotel in Westgate Street, confirmed it had submitted a bid for the project.

A spokesman for the firm said: “We can confirm that Dowdeswell Estates have submitted a bid for the Herbert, Kimberly and Phillpotts building. We are unable to make any further comment at this time.”

Gloucester currently has a Travelodge and Premier Inn at the Quays and several smaller hotels in the city centre, but no major independent hotel on its famous inland waterfront.

Senior councillors were instructed in February 2019 to market the three leasehold interests the city council holds in HKP Warehouses.

Following a marketing campaign where 50 parties showed interest in taking over the site, five responses were received for a variety of uses, on differing terms and subject to different conditions.

Two of the five were “less attractive” as they were for uses where it was “extremely unlikely” that planned consent would have been approved, a city council document said.

The three remaining offers from developers looked to create a hotel in “all or part of the accommodation”.

The authority is in discussion with its landlord, the Canal and River Trust, over the changes and has been given the go-ahead, subject to final details.