Stalled £50m Plymouth hotel development brought back to market

The prominent waterfront site of a stalled £50m hotel development in the Plymouth Hoe area is up for sale again, after the ending of an agreement between the council and the original developer.

The elevated site of the former Quality Inn hotel was demolished some five years ago and the site was then cleared, with the intention of creating a five-star hotel scheme called Hotel 1620.

The site was set to accommodate visitors in 2020 to Plymouth’s Mayflower 400 celebrations, marking the 400th anniversary of the voyage of the Pilgrims to the United States.

However, the planned 11-storey, 80 bedroom hotel and 15 storey apartment block never materialised, and now Colliers International is seeking a new development partner on behalf of Plymouth City Council.

Marc Finney, head of Hotels and Resorts Consulting at Colliers International, who is handling the sale, said that the council’s objective for the site was to “secure the delivery of a high quality hotel-led mixed use development, and that this would be a major factor in determining selection of developer and price”.

He added that while proposals could include an element of residential use this was not a requirement, although where resident use was included in proposals, the council would consider how these would “contribute to the overall quality and delivery of the project”.

He said: “Plymouth’s hotel market is extremely undersupplied when compared to similar destinations, and the city will continue to benefit from the growing importance of staycations, which has been highlighted during the current Covid-19 crisis.

“In the inaugural Colliers International Covid-19 Recovery Hotels Index, which analysed which cities would see the strongest market bounce back, we predicted that Plymouth would be the top performer in the UK and this has indeed been the case with the city recording highest levels of hotel occupancy in the UK in both August and September.”

He added: “Not surprisingly, we have already received considerable interest from both UK and overseas developers, among them developers which had previously bid for this site and know it well.”

A spokesperson for Plymouth City Council said: “The agreement between Henley Real Estate Developments Ltd and Plymouth City Council has come to an end. The Council has recently appointed Colliers International to market the site and to assist the Council in its search for a developer for the site. The site is allocated in the Council’s Joint Local Plan for hotel led mixed use regeneration.”