Construction work has started to build an 80-bedroom budget hotel on Southend seafront. The five-storey building will be Premier Inn’s second hotel on the seafront, already operating the Halfway House in Thorpe Bay.
The development will include a spacious car park and a 190-cover Brewers Fayre restaurant on the ground floor of the hotel. The Premier Inn will reportedly create 65 new jobs in Southend.
Premier Inn, which is the UK’s largest hotel brand with over 650 hotels, said: “Our new Southend-on-Sea hotel will be super close to Sea Life Adventure, the famous Southend Pier, as well as the attractions and amenities of the bustling, Essex, costal town centre.”
The company say the new budget hotel will bring more leisure and business visitors to the town, helping to support the local economy.
The new hotel on Eastern Esplanade is being built on the former gasworks site. As part of the contract for the sale of the land to Premier Inn, the neighbouring part-demolished Esplanade House office block was required to be demolished.
The derelict seafront eyesore has now been fully demolished and the last piles of rubble are being removed. The old Esplanade House site is owned by Robert Leonard Group and already has planning permission to build a development of another hotel, shops, blocks of flats and affordable homes on the site.
The site is currently being offered for sale with interested parties required to submit their offers by 11 December 2014.