Brent preferred bidder to buy civic centre

Yea Man wrote:

Add to that a travelodge just a few hundred yards away from where this new posh hotel will be.

People don't have much money these days so I imagine a cheap travelodge will do better against a rich man's bedroom at £100+ a night.

he is a poor mans donald trump this much is true.

We much prefer the premier inns!

Not enough quality Hotels available in Plymouth....so people with money go elsewhere.....quite simple really.

Even this day and age their will always be people with money who want the best accomodation available.

What on earth convinces you of that Zyph?

mouldyoldgoat wrote:

We much prefer the premier inns!

I've never come across one of their £29 deals wherever I have been going to....very select with them in places that you want to go too.

Anyrate the wife tries to keep me away from those "eat yourself to death" breakfasts.

ZYPH wrote:

Not enough quality Hotels available in Plymouth....so people with money go elsewhere.....quite simple really.

Even this day and age their will always be people with money who want the best accomodation available.

nonsense there are loads of hotels ranging in prices. People just dont want to come to plymouth as there is nothing here. Building more and more hotels isnt going to change that.

GOB wrote:

What on earth convinces you of that Zyph?

Observation of how the other half live.

I see. I'll bare in mind how you reach your conclusions when I read your comments from now on.

ZYPH wrote:

mouldyoldgoat wrote:

We much prefer the premier inns!

I've never come across one of their £29 deals wherever I have been going to....very select with them in places that you want to go too.

Anyrate the wife tries to keep me away from those "eat yourself to death" breakfasts.

You have to book them quite a while in advance to get the £29 deals. The breakfast is great, that's why I am a little on the large side!  

Angry wrote:

ZYPH wrote:

Not enough quality Hotels available in Plymouth....so people with money go elsewhere.....quite simple really.

Even this day and age their will always be people with money who want the best accomodation available.

nonsense there are loads of hotels ranging in prices. People just dont want to come to plymouth as there is nothing here. Building more and more hotels isnt going to change that.

Don't run down Plymouth.... it is brilliantly situated as a touring centre to go east,west or north from.

Have you counted the Americans that want to see those Barbican steps to the new world....they love their history and can't wait to find their ancestral roots.

mouldyoldgoat wrote:

ZYPH wrote:

mouldyoldgoat wrote:

We much prefer the premier inns!

I've never come across one of their £29 deals wherever I have been going to....very select with them in places that you want to go too.

Anyrate the wife tries to keep me away from those "eat yourself to death" breakfasts.

You have to book them quite a while in advance to get the £29 deals. The breakfast is great, that's why I am a little on the large side!  

Hope your not too porky...you might get mistaken for someone else !!!

 Who do you mean?

ZYPH wrote:

Angry wrote:

ZYPH wrote:

Not enough quality Hotels available in Plymouth....so people with money go elsewhere.....quite simple really.

Even this day and age their will always be people with money who want the best accomodation available.

nonsense there are loads of hotels ranging in prices. People just dont want to come to plymouth as there is nothing here. Building more and more hotels isnt going to change that.

Don't run down Plymouth.... it is brilliantly situated as a touring centre to go east,west or north from.

Have you counted the Americans that want to see those Barbican steps to the new world....they love their history and can't wait to find their ancestral roots.

I say again there is nothing of worth in plymouth that would suggest that it needs hundreds of hotels. Also, the steps you refer too are under the ladies toilet block in a nearby pub.

Last time I looked, the old Admiral's House is going to be a boutique hotel, too.

I've got a postcard of an old poster (1930s, I think), promoting Plymouth as a 'delightful centre for holidays' - centre being the operative word, because people would stay here and then do what my family did, travel round the region by train. Nowadays people have got cars, and the type who'd stay in the expensive hotels have probably got second homes in Cornwall.

It just doesn't stack up, does it? Even if we get a few more big conferences down here, there seem to be plans to create hundreds of hotel rooms. Yet the Grand was rebuilt as apartments, two others have closed, and rumours at the one where I swim indicate that they're struggling outside the main summer season. And, contrary to some others, my experience of travelling on business is that you're expected to do it as cheaply as possible, that you get a fixed maximum allowance that wouldn't permit four- or five-star, or - as in my last job - that the company's got a contract with a chain and you have use it regardless.

Still - who wouldn't rush to a city where you can get your teeth done and go to an Imax within a few steps?

I quite like it and I'm glad the Civic Centre has been listed. Variety of architectural styles in a city centre is a good thing. I also don't mind it being turned into a hotel as long as the hotel offers something in contrast to those that we already have and Plymouth does need some top-end, in terms of quality, hotel provision.

Contrary to some (maybe most) I don't agree that the city does have enough, or too many, hotels already and I'm sure I read somewhere that the occupancy rate of the city's hotels is surprisingly high and that when the big events come to town, like the America's Cup for instance, we are seriously short of extra accomodation for people to stay in the city. So they don't. And they spend their money elsewhere.

It's exactly the same argument that applies to the capacity of Home Park: people need to be able to come before they will. Spare capacity, either hotel beds or stadium seats, is not a drain on resources that should be feared but an opportunity that should be exploited.

Brent obviously gets that in terms of hotels even if he doesn't in terms of football clubs.

As for the Arts' Centre: why not? It'd be a good thing and it'd be in the right place. Forget about any grants being available for it though. Am I the only one who has noticed what has been happening to Arts funding in this country recently? We still have a budget deficit, don't you know, and nothing else matters to the Treasury.

Now bring HMS Plymouth to the city too so that "Britain's Ocean City" actually has more substance than rhetorical bullshit to it.

And so that all of those people staying in all of those hotels have something of permanent interest to go and see.

You're right Peggy, something isn't stacking up about any of this ongoing fiasco. As much as it will be good to see something happening with the Civic Centre tower block I cannot for the life of me understand how it will survive as a hotel in a City that has no shortage of hotel space, no matter what standard it is.

As someone said recently, Brent has his finger in three very, very big pies at the moment, not one has been started yet.

I also agree with SFD, if a hotel of such a mass is to be provided then this City is going to need a big step in the tourist direction, it's something that should have been done decades ago and a start would be to see HMS Plymouth as a focal point rather than the yuppy apartments that prevent access to much of the City's coastline these days.

Maybe Peter Jones is going to single-handedly turn Plymouth into a thriving tourist hotspot overnight?

I've stayed at quite a few premier inn's for £29, and that's for the whole family. Then you pay about £7.95 for an all you can eat breakfast which always sounds like a challenge to me so being competitive I never turn it down.

You guys and gals would know more about Plymouth and it's need for hotels than me but I do often wonder why people would visit Plymouth. Is the Americas Cup being held there? Now that would attract some wealthy people but isn't that a bit of a one-off?

Fireworks at Plymouth were good this year!

Yup a one off Jock but there is some hope that it will return, I hope it does, it was a great success for the City and it seems because of that, that other top water events are showing interest.

As for the hotel I can only see a financial disaster for Brent unless Plymouth has a dramatic change of direction and chooses to buy into the tourism thing in a big way but I suppose it's Brent's money to do what he wants with...isn't it?

C&P from Trust board.

Hugh Watt wrote:

Richard Blight wrote:

Somebody mentioned to me a while ago that Kiers was already signed up.

Not a clue whether that is correct or not.

Done a bit a research. Your right It's Kier.

They're right you know. As any PI will know the details in the
## Waste Management Plan LINK ##

Start date of 23rd September stacks up with Pompey being last game for Mayflower.

Scheme is only worth £40M to them. Hope he hasn't paid £10M to his "professionals"

He must have been pretty damn sure of planning approval to have a £40M contract prepared and signed within a week.

Just an idea to help out Jim, considering he wants a huge great hotel in a City that doesn't really need a huge great hotel, but why not turn into student accommodation and just pretend it's a hotel to keep the public quiet? Just an idea like.

ZYPH wrote:

Have you counted the Americans that want to see those Barbican steps to the new world....they love their history and can't wait to find their ancestral roots.

Talking of which...

There seems to have been no 'development' of the steps as an attraction for anybody, never mind American visitors, at all!

Which might give a hint to where Plymouth's problems really lie. A couple of ads in a decent promotion campaign in America would do more for Plymouth in a day, than all this 'Ocean City' bollox is going to do in a lifetime!

Nothing to do in Plymouth. Hypothetical, I am staying in the 4* hotel in the centre of the City.

Day 1 - take a bus to Admiral's Hard and get on the Cremyl Ferry to Mt Edgcumbe. Wander around the grounds, grab lunch at The Edgcumbe Arms and get the ferry back to Plymouth. I take a right and walk down to the Royal William Yard and have a few drinks overlooking the Tamar. I then take a walk back to the hotel, have a shower and get changed. In the evening, I'm off to the Barbican and I take in a few pubs and decide to have fish n' chips in Platters. A few pints on my way back to the hotel.

Day 2 - I'm off to the Aquarium today - spend four hours there and have a late lunch at Table Table. In the evening, I go to the theatre.

Day 3 - I've booked a canoe trip around Mount Batten and a day of watersports ensues. In the evening, I'm eating at Tanners.

Day 4 - I'm a hiker today so I get on the 84 bus and head out to Yelverton for a day of hiking around the moors. I go for a swim in the Life Centre before an evening meal on the 14th floor.

Day 5 - I'm a keen fisherman so the five people I've come with have hired a boat and we're out fishing. In true fisherman style, we eat what we catch on the boat.

There's a lot to do here and a lot to do that's nearby. The biggest zoo in Europe, the Eden Project, miles and miles of Cornish coastlines, Crealy in Exeter, coastal and moorland walks. A lot of it is free too. The kids are on holiday at the moment and we've had some great days out at Saltram and Mount Batten and spent hardly anything. There's also things you can pay for. If you think there's nothing to do, move to Las Vegas.

So once i have stayed 5 nights in a 4 star hotel, eaten in a different restaurant every night,hired a boat to travel 40 miles out to sea to catch some fish,cooked them in my hotel room, yomped around the moors, and canoed in a polluted Sound im thinking could i get the same thing better and more reasonably priced out in.... lets say Benidorm for example?
Dont get me wrong Plymouth itself is not bad in places but take away the Barbican and the Hoe its pretty much soulless and in other areas bordering on a crap-hole, not the sort of place if i was living elsewhere to take the family on a 5 day holiday.
Hanging gardens of Babylon it certainly aint.
I really think this renaissance of new hotels are going to fail in the long run

As a short city break, it's as good as similar sized places with the added bonus of amazing natural resources. I didn't mean "stay for 5 days", I just gave 5 examples of days. I could do a lot more 'days' but I don't want to soend three hours typing up a post.
You also have to remember that living here is entirely different than visiting.

It's a bit like the "what have the Romans ever done for us" sketch isn't it.