Centre facelift can’t be avoided indefinitely

CORPORATE conferences and events are increasingly big business for Yorkshire but there are interesting questions of which places in the region are going to be best placed to benefit.

Hot on the heels of the recent news that Leeds City Council bosses are considering ditching a plan for a new convention centre and events space on the site of the old Yorkshire Bank building close to the First Direct Arena, long-standing proposals for a multi-million redevelopment of Harrogate Convention Centre have been scrapped by North Yorkshire councillors.

A redevelopment project for HCC was first mooted in 2016 for the ageing building with the first phase focused on improving the conference centre side of the venue and the second designed to replace existing exhibition halls with a new event space.

However, the original £47m estimate for both parts of the job proved to be rather optimistic, with the first phase alone subsequently priced at £48.6m. The second phase of the work was deferred but now new estimates have put the first phase cost at £57.2m thanks in part to rising construction costs.

A failure to win a hoped-for £20m of Government Levelling Up funding dealt a further blow to the scheme while the original hope of keeping the venue open during the work was dashed with the project instead expected to entail shutting large parts of the venue for up to 15 months at a time – putting £14m of forward bookings for various events at risk.

In the circumstances, it is hardly surprising that councillors rubberstamped recommendations to drop the current plan in favour of investigating cheaper potential options. The report to councillors made clear that the problem of how to improve the centre cannot be deferred indefinitely.

With the council subsidising the venue to the tune of almost £3m a year, it is also generating around £45m annually for the local economy as a result of attracting tens of thousands of visitors to Harrogate, leaving things as they are will result in the venue’s further deterioration.

In the long run, an eye-watering net loss of £278m on the venue over 40 years is projected in the ‘do nothing’ scenario. But there is also a more immediate headache to tackle. The building is one of the region’s largest carbon emitters and it had been hoped that the redevelopment would upgrade its heating and pumping systems to start addressing this.

However, the report acknowledges the building “poses challenges” to the council’s ambitious aim of reaching net zero by 2030. One idea being looked at is phasing this work over a longer period to reduce disruption – a proposal which highlights the tension between reducing carbon emissions and balancing the books.

Despite the challenges, the prize for Harrogate in getting this right is clear.

The UK Conference and Meeting Survey 2023 published last June showed in 2022 there were more than one million such events held, more than double recorded in the Covid-affected years of 2020 and 2021 and valued at £16.3bn of direct expenditure in venues and the wider destination.

The survey for 2023 is expected to record even stronger numbers. Harrogate can’t afford to miss out on its part of the action.