Planning approved for new 132-room Maidstone hotel

Dexter Moren Associates (DMA) announced it has won planning permission for a new 132-room hotel in Maidstone.

The new hotel which features a lobby, reception, cafe area and restaurant will also compromise the town’s first publicly accessible rooftop bar.

The landmark hotel will sit on the site of a former Mothercare building and will bring additional footfall and an estimated £650,000 in annual spending to the heart of Maidstone town centre. 

The scheme builds on Assetrock Maidstone’s track record of developing challenging, often overlooked sites, seeing in them opportunities to create assets for communities, boosting local economies and acting as a catalyst for job creation.

DMA said taking into account the “sensitive” location, it has carefully sculpted the form of the building, squaring off some corners and using indents and setbacks to reduce the massing and minimising the visual impact from Week Street and other key views. 

The hotel stands at three storeys facing the main pedestrianised shopping area with the nine-storey element sitting modestly behind the taller Colman House office block.

Herbert Lui, partner at DMA: “The client’s brief was to explore the opportunity to re-develop the site with a landmark building to match the 11-storey office building next to it. 

“We worked hard to reassure the authorities, through our designs and choices of materials, that this new hotel would be a respectful and quality piece of architecture and a positive contributor to the regeneration of the town centre -with elements such as the publicly accessible rooftop bar likely to attract patrons from outside the hotel.”