Anger over new hotel plans

Blackpool Gazette

B&B owners fear a proposed 4-star hotel will leave them without sunlight and fighting for parking spaces.  The Sutton Park hotel is potentially facing more disruption if plans for the new build are approved.

Transcript

00:00 I'm not totally against any building work where St Chad's was. I'm not. I just have

00:10 concerns over parking and the disruption of the build. All of which could be dealt with

00:17 with a conversation. Maybe if somebody from fragrance group or the construction crew could

00:22 perhaps pop round and we could have a chat and they could show me exactly what they're

00:27 planning to do. From what I've seen on the planning they are going to allow 30 parking

00:35 spaces to the rear of the building which will border along Bolton Street which is the road

00:40 we share. As far as I can see they're allowing 143 rooms to be built. Now if all of those

00:51 rooms have brought a car and there are only 30 parking spaces as far as I can work out

00:58 that leaves a shortfall of 110 parking spaces. Where do these people park? The roads along

01:07 the sea front are going to be right adjacent to the hotel. They are the ones that are really

01:13 going to suffer and they're already suffering as it is because there's so limited parking.

01:18 If you're a hotel with 8 bedrooms you've got to find 8 spaces for your guests or send them

01:24 to an alternative car park which a lot of them don't want to have to drag their luggage

01:30 or walk back and forth to their car. They want to be near the hotel they're staying

01:35 in. A lot of hotels do not have the luxury of having car parking so they rely on their

01:41 guests parking on the main road and as it is it's a fight during the peak seasons to

01:47 get a space even for your own vehicle. So what people are worried about is that the

01:51 new plans have got less parking than previously and with even more rooms than before the parking

01:58 is going to become a major issue. Before the St Chad's as people may remember was 4 usable

02:07 storeys and then it had a pitched roof. So it would take up the same space as a 5 storey

02:14 building but obviously only 4 of those storeys were inhabited with hotel guests. So we've

02:23 got an extra 2 floors of inhabited rooms looking down on us so it will be considerably higher

02:32 and will blot out a lot more of the sky so it will be quite an impact on us. For the

02:41 people that are right close to the St Chad's, their properties, it is going to have a massive

02:46 effect on the amount of sunlight that they get for their own hotels. So is it considerably

02:52 higher than the old St Chad's? The old St Chad's I believe was 5 storeys. It had a pitched

03:00 roof so if you take into consideration the pitched roof but you still saw sunlight either

03:07 side of the roof as the sun was coming round. And it's just the whole design. I think a

03:11 lot of people are disappointed that the design is not in keeping with traditional Blackpool.

03:18 There's no like really fancy features. It hasn't got any real character. Because obviously

03:34 it's going to probably be peak season by the time they get started now. So not only will

03:39 our guests have to worry about where they're parking, they're going to have to be manoeuvring

03:43 in and out of big lorries, cranes being delivered, parts being delivered. So these roads are

03:49 narrow. You can either get 2 cars down and passing as it is without. If there's a lorry,

03:55 bricks being delivered, whatever, cement lorries, cranes. It will affect where people can get

04:01 up and down our roads to actually even get to our hotels. It was very hard to get information

04:07 about when they were going to demolish it. We didn't really know until plants and machinery

04:12 started arriving on site. They decided to start in May and you may remember back then

04:19 we had three bank holidays. We had diggers, machinery, trucks, the rest of it, for the

04:38 best part of a month while they were demolishing it. A lot of these hotels have got basements

04:42 and they are worried that it's actually going to affect their structure of their buildings.

04:47 I don't know, maybe subsidence, cracking in the buildings. It's just the actual mess

04:53 and everything else that's going to make the dust and stress to the people that are

04:58 living here. No one's actually took into account that or even spoke to any of the local people.

05:03 So do you think they've been quite inconsiderate about the neighbours and the disruption?

05:08 I do, yes. I do think they've been inconsiderate, yes. During the demolition process I was speaking

05:15 to the site manager who was in charge of the overall construction, or the demolition, I

05:22 beg your pardon. He assured me that when the demolition was done they were going to hire

05:27 some cherry pickers and they were going to wash down our building, clean our windows,

05:34 clean our gutters. All of this was promised. I mean it was promised verbally, there was

05:38 nothing written down. But I trusted them and I thought well that's a way to go, you know,

05:46 you build a bit of rapport with your neighbours. None of this happened. There was no washing

05:52 down afterwards. The side of my building was absolutely filthy dirty. We had a letter through

05:57 the post but I've never had a one to one conversation with anyone. So somebody writing down what

06:04 they want to do and then not giving me any recourse to answer that is not really a conversation

06:12 or consulting. Nobody wants to have bad feeling with their neighbours when they're having

06:18 to do what they see as necessary construction. And I'm not against all construction, I just

06:24 want some of my views aired and spoken about.

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