Margate’s regeneration, based on its £17 million Turner Contemporary Gallery, is under threat because of the recession.
Plans for a top quality hotel and new leisure centre have been abandoned and English Heritage, one of the main partners behind the arts-based regeneration programme, fears that revised plans will not be enough to attract and keep visitors to the town.
Developers dropped out of building a four-star hotel next to the gallery last year - but Kent County Council, which has been the prime mover in the regeneration plan, wants to place a budget hotel there instead. Even then the hotel will not be ready in time for the gallery’s opening in 2011.
But English Heritage’s urban panel says that a luxury hotel is “critical” to the success of the Turner Contemporary and warned the county council to “resist cheap and inappropriate development”.
The panel added that plans to re-open Margate’s iconic Dreamland leisure and amusement centre should be allowed to go ahead without the need to build flats and houses on the sit. The panel said: “We see no merit in delaying the scheme because the grander development package can no longer be built. The remainder of the site can be brought forward, with minimal investment, as an events space.”