Work has restarted on Plymouth’s £9m Moxy hotel development but developers say it still won’t be completed until 2023.
A crane has arrived at the site, in the former car park next to the Pavilions at Millbay, and construction workers are on site. This comes after work virtually ceased in December 2021 and it emerged subcontractors left the site.
However, the developer behind the scheme, Dutch company Vastint Hospitality, said work is now once again under way with a lift shaft and stairwell being completed before modular rooms, manufactured off-site, arrive.
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A spokesperson for Vastint Hospitality said: “ The works are progressing now. They managed to get a crane on site and now they can continue with making the concrete cores and slabs. After that the prefabricated building elements will be assembled.”
But the spokesperson added: “The contractor’s programme is still showing an opening date in Q1-2023.”
The hotel was expected to be ready by August 2022, but that was before the scheme was beset by problems and delays. Work began in June 2021 but remnants of a Victorian sewer system, old railway sidings and a huge concrete block were found underground and had to be removed, delaying the build programme. The Covid-19 pandemic caused further delays.
The two concrete cores, one for a lift shaft and one for a stairwell, have been partially constructed and some of the building’s steel skeleton is already visible.
Vastint Hospitality is developing the six-storey building, which will become a 200-bedroom hotel with associated landscaping, car parking, restaurant, bar and leisure facilities. The hotel, which will front onto the newly created Millbay Boulevard, will be run under Marriott Bonvoy’s Moxy brand.
Construction is being orchestrated by Lithuania-headquartered main contractor Mitnija, which said in 2021 it was planning to have the build wrapped up in just 14 months.
That won’t now happen and industry sources in Plymouth told BusinessLive work slowed in late 2021 and work has yet to begin on the “timber box” hotel rooms, with roofing and cladding work not starting in January 2022 as was planned. If the delays had not happened, finishing touches would have been done next month, with hotel rooms handed over to Moxy from June 2022.
Mitnija UK describes itself as “a new, young, exciting and dynamic main contractor”, and although its roots are in Lithuania a UK division started about six years ago and has been working on retail developments and hotels.
