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A new hotel built in place of a derelict seaside arcade would help put an end to Herne Bay losing tourists to Whitstable, a councillor believes.
The city council is searching for developers to take on the former Tivoli Amusements in Central Parade, and the land behind it in Beach Street.
And town centre Conservative Andrew Cook is urging authority bosses to use this as an opportunity to address the dearth of beds in the Bay.
The Heron councillor said: “If it could include a hotel, that’d be absolutely brilliant. We just haven’t got sufficient beds at the moment.
“That means people will leave the town to stay somewhere else and eat somewhere else, so it’s hard work for our restaurants in the town.
“We could do so much more if we had tourists staying here. People have to stay in Margate, Whitstable, Canterbury, and only come across here for day trips.”
Councillors voted in March to allow the authority to search for a buyer of the site – which includes the Beach Street car parks – or for a developer to carry out the work on its behalf.
The decision was made despite concerns officials would lose control of the Herne Bay seafront development if it was sold.
This came as the council was faced with the prospect of rising building costs and shelling out £40,000 to mothball the amusements if it decided to replace the building with homes and commercial units itself.
“Now we’ve got it opened up with more flexibility, I would like to see a hotel going in,” Cllr Cook added.
“I know people are interested in the site. If developers want to get up and running quickly, they can use our current plans or they can change them.
“We’re losing people to Whitstable because they can stay there. It’s the wrong way round. We’re so far behind the curve on hotels.”
"People have to stay in Margate, Whitstable, Canterbury, and only come across here for day trips...”
The council bought the former arcade for £1.1 million in 2018.
Known as the Beach Street project, the scheme, which was approved the same year, involves building studios, three shops and 31 homes, of which 10 will be social housing.
And when councillors met to vote on the project’s future five months ago, Labour leader Cllr Dave Wilson called for the site to be sold to get “the council’s finances back in the balance as soon as possible”.
“We cannot afford to wait to see if a white knight developer, if there’s any such thing, rides to our rescue,” he explained.
“This scenario is a symptom of a malaise that really threatens council services and our financial stability.
“We’ve got Whitefriars, Parham Road, the Kingsmead housing development, Station Road West, the Riverside development – every single one of these ventures has hit one problem or another.
“We can’t blame Covid for all of these failures - something more fundamental is wrong.
“The result is the council has a capital debt burden of about £200 million with an average interest rate of 2.58%, which gives us an interest cost of nearly £5 million a year, and that money’s wasted.”
