Rebuild is ‘only solution’ for centre’s future

FINDING a partner to redevelop Torquay’s Riviera International Conference Centre and seafront is the ‘only solution’ according to councillors.

A brochure asking for ideas from developers has been approved – and it could lead to the conference centre and pool being demolished and replaced as part of a wider scheme including a hotel, shops, offices and housing.

Torbay Council’s overview and scrutiny board agreed to start the search for a commercial partner to develop the site, which could include the gardens behind and next door to historic Torre Abbey.

The marketing brief put forward by elected mayor Gordon Oliver and approved by councillors outlines future possibilities for the site. It lists shops, leisure, conference, offices, homes and a hotel, and considers relocating or rebuilding current facilities.

The next stage is to appoint a business partner for the redevelopment project in May next year, ahead of the end of the current lease in 2020.

This year the authority is paying out £350,000 in a management fee to the arms-length company it owns which runs the centre, taking the subsidy over the last three years to more than £1m. But there would be no ongoing operating subsidy under any new deal for the site from 2020.

Mayor Oliver told council- lors at the meeting on Wednesday the authority had tried a similar process before without success. But after the end of the lease in 2020, ‘what we don’t want is another empty building,’ he added.

The mayor described the project as ‘probably the most valuable site in the South West’.

Committee chairman, Conservative Chris Lewis, said: “For the last seven years we have known there was a problem with the Riviera Centre, and the only solution is to get an outside developer or partner to find a solution.”

But concerns were raised about how the open spaces of Abbey Meadows and Abbey Park could be affected.The conference centre is described as an ‘innovative redevelopment opportunity’.

Torbay MP Kevin Foster and the beach clean crew at Fairy Cove in Paignton