Ambitious opening date pencilled in for Peterborough's troubled £30 million Hilton Garden Inn

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Hotel is close to completion

An ambitious goal has been set to secure the completion and opening of Peterborough’s £30 million Hilton Garden Inn.

The summer of next year has been pencilled in for the long-awaited opening of the 160-bedroom hotel at Fletton Quays.

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The target has been suggested after councillors agreed to submit a £16.7 million credit bid for the freehold of the nine-storey hotel.

Action is being taken to ensure the completion of Peterborough's Hilton Garden InnAction is being taken to ensure the completion of Peterborough's Hilton Garden Inn
Action is being taken to ensure the completion of Peterborough's Hilton Garden Inn

The bid has been submitted to administrators Teneo, which were appointed by Peterborough City Council when it took the hotel developer, Fletton Quays Hotel, into administration last October after a prolonged period in which no building work was carried out.

It will protect the council’s £16.7 million investment – made up of a £15 million loan from 2017 plus £1.7 million of interest

The council retaining ownership is just one option that will be set out in a business case to be presented to councillors in July.

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But Cecilie Booth, the council’s executive director of corporate services and Section 151 officer, said: “Ideally, we can build the hotel to completion with the right developer and keep it in council ownership.

“If we can get someone on site by September or October, then I am very much hoping that by next summer the hotel will be ready and open to guests.

She added: “The hotel is 85 to 90 per cent finished. The sky bar, the communal area at the front, and many rooms have not yet been finished. There is about six to nine months work to be done.”

Completion is likely to cost £14.4 million with some expected to come from government grants. £10 million has already been set aside.

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Ms Booth said: “We are immediately starting a soft marketing exercise talking to all the interested parties.

"We’re talking to hotel developers, operators and advisers who will look at whether the council should complete the hotel, own it for a number of years and then sell when it is an established hotel with a trading history.

"Or if we get an interested party wanting to buy the hotel and the apartments next door and invest in the city, then we might consider that.

"If a hotel developer comes along and says it’ll pay what we are owed – £16.7 million – then we might agree that.”

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Why can’t the cash be spent on other services?

Ms Booth said: “People say we are pouring all this money into a hotel whereas we could use it on social care, street cleansing, the regional pool and so on

“But this isn’t tax payers money that we are using to prop up the Hilton.

“The money to lend to the developer has been borrowed by the council from the Government’s public works loan board.

"That loan will have to be repaid by the council whether the hotel carries on or not.

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“So if we were to accept a £12 million offer we’d still have another £5 million of the loan that we have to repay and that would have to be repaid by taxpayers because we’d have no other income to service that debt.

She said: “The hotel is not taking money from anything else.

“When the hotel opens it will provide an income stream that repays the council over time.”

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