New Barbican hotel

It’s good to see that the Hilton Group are displaying plans for the new hotel which they hope to build next to the Barbican.
Commercial property firm Broadhall unveiled proposals for the 165-bedroom hotel costing between £19 and 20 million, with conference and leisure facilities.
The Hilton Garden Inn Hotel will take 62 weeks to complete if planning permission is granted by the City of York Council.
When the last plans for a hotel on this site were considered by the Planning Committee in 2007 a decision was deferred to allow for amendments to be made to the plans. Unfortunately this meant that the proposal, from Premier Inn, was dropped in favour of another site (on Blossom Street).
The economic recession bit and development money became tight. So the site has remained empty for 4 years.
The development is vital if the adjacent auditorium is to continue as a concert hall. Ticket sales for concerts have been fairly average since it reopened and it badly needs to expand the use of the building during the day time. Conferences are the most obvious market opportunity and the availability of overnight accommodation next door – together with break out rooms and dining facilities – would be a big boost fro the centre.
Directly the development would provide several dozen new jobs but equally important the arrival of more conferences in the City would provide a much wider boost for the local economy.

Planned Barbican Hotel

Park and Ride decision

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We will probably never know whether York’s new park and ride sites would have got the go ahead without the substantial subsidy that local taxpayers have now been asked to make into the project. The Wigginton Road site has been shelved but Poppleton and Askham Bar are still in the running for government funding.
Around £6 million will now come from local sources with about half of that likely to be borrowed. That means an annual cost – for principal and interest payments – of about £270,000 a year with this potentially being offset by the surplus fares income, of between £50,000 & £250,000, which may be generated from the Askham Bar and Poppleton Park sites combined.
A lot will depend on the specification for the new bus fleet which will serve these sites. The original intention was to seek ultra low emission vehicles (probably plug in hybrids) but this may not now be possible.
The A59 corridor was also to have been used to trial a bus contract which would have seen greater integration between the Park and Ride and normal bus services in the area.
Residents in Moor Lane will be wondering what the future of the existing park and ride car park will be when the site moves to Sim Hills. Originally it was assumed that Tesco would buy the site as an extension to their car park. The figures assumed by the new Council suggest that some development on the site is a possibility (subject to planning consent).
So still a lot of questions to be answered when the project gets its formal “go ahead” by central government at the end of the year.