Plans have been submitted to build a 100-bed Premier Inn hotel on the site of a care home in St Ives, Cornwall.
Premier Inn’s parent company, Whitbread, has put in the proposals - first unveiled in September - for the £10m accommodation which it wants to build on the current site of the Trewidden Care Home on Trewidden Road next to Trenwith Car Park.
Whitbread has said the hotel could create 30 full-time jobs, with guests bringing in an estimated £2.5 m per year to the local economy – £1.2m of which the company calculates could be spent outside the seaside town’s peak tourism season.
The firm said more than 100 people attended public exhibition events in October to view the proposals and give feedback.
An application submitted to Cornwall Council proposed for the demolition of the care home to be replaced by a hotel with "associated landscaping, car parking and associated infrastructure".
Planning permission for a 39-bedroom hotel on the site was previously granted granted in 2016, but Premier Inn’s new proposals would supersede those, with the hotel potentially occupying “a large portion” of the site if built. The York Hotel previously operated there until the 1980s.
The Trewidden Care Home will continue to operate during the planning application process. Whitbread said if permission is granted residents will be offered the chance to transfer to a new care home currently being built in Penzance, due to be finished in the autumn.
Louise Woodruff, property acquisitions manager at Whitbread, said: “During October, we were able to meet with residents and community stakeholders to share our plans for St Ives. We have been listening to their feedback and been working closely with our team to design a hotel that is fitting for the town and would bring many long-term benefits.
“We are passionate about providing an affordable destination for leisure and business travellers in St Ives throughout the year – bringing a different style of hotel accommodation to the town and creating permanent employment.”
Whitbread currently operates four Premier Inn hotels in west Cornwall at Camborne, Hayle Helston and Penzance.
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