DEMOLITION work of a former conference space is well underway to make way for a new nine-storey hotel near the seafront.
The former exhibition space at the back of the Metropole Hotel in Cannon Place, Brighton, is being cleared to replace the building with a new hotel building with 221 bedrooms.
Almost all of the original building has been torn down by excavators.
The exhibition space was last used in 2018, with the city’s tourism team reassuring councillors in a meeting last year that the loss of the space would not impact Brighton’s ability to host large conferences.
Plans were approved by Brighton and Hove City Councillors after agreement that the new development would improve the look of the area.
A condition of the planning permission requires the Metropole site's owner, Topland, to spend £50,000 on public art.
However, the Regency Square Area Society and the Brighton Society both raised objections to the plans, with concerns about repairs to older facades in Cannon Place and St Margaret’s Place and that the design of the new hotel would not be sympathetic to the area.
A spokesman for the Brighton Society said last year; “It is an overbearing, poorly conceived and poorly designed proposal, out of context with its conservation area surroundings in terms of scale, form, detailing and materials.
“It attempts to cram too much accommodation onto its sensitive site.”
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