Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Council re-opens bus lane near eyesore hotel
BRISTOL City Council has reopened a pavement and bus lane in front of the eyesore half-demolished Grosvenor Hotel near Temple Meads station – signalling that the hotel may well continue to be half-demolished for an indefinite period.
Earlier this year, a court had ordered the hotel’s owner Nimish Popat to either demolish the building or make it safe so that the council could end the ‘exclusion zone’ around the fire-damaged hotel on Temple Way, and reopen the bus stop, pavement and bus lane in front of the hotel.
Mr Popat was given until the end of March to fulfill the terms of the court order, and on the first weekend of February, he responded by demolishing just the fire-damaged original hotel building, leaving the 1930s rear extension to the hotel still standing.
The devastating fire to the original core of the eyesore building took place in October 2022, and the building was immediately covered in scaffolding to make it safe.
When that was removed, the council ordered a wide ‘exclusion zone’ around it, to keep people safe if it suddenly collapsed, and that zone included the bus stop, pavement and bus lane on Temple Way nearby.
The council went to court to force Mr Popat to either make the building safe again, or demolish it, but in the first week of February he did both and neither – he demolished only the front half of the building.
The Mayor of Bristol was among many city leaders to welcome the demolition work when it started, but within a couple of days, it was reported that Mr Popat’s intention was not to completely demolish the Victorian hotel at all, merely to do
enough to fulfill the terms of the court order, and to make the building safe enough so that the road could be reopened.
Council chiefs said they were confident Mr Popat would complete the demolition work, but now it appears that the council has agreed that enough has been done and the exclusion zone has been cleared from the front of the old hotel.
At the time, the council said: “The building is the responsibility of its owner.
“Work to meet the obligations of
the court order is ongoing and the council continues to monitor this situation closely.”
When the council went to court, the order it obtained was to force Mr Popat to either “erect a suitable scaffold to make the structure safe, or demolish the building, or any dangerous part of it, and remove any rubbish resulting from the demolition”, or to “undertake works to make the building or any part thereof secure and obviate any other dangers such as loose masonry, stonework and glass, such concerns as are not obviated by a relevant exclusion zone”.
Mr Popat has been involved in a long-running dispute with Bristol City Council over the fate of the Grosvenor Hotel.
The site is a key one for the Temple Quarter regeneration project, and Bristol City Council has tried to obtain a compulsory purchase order several times over the past few years, but there is a difference in the owner’s valuation and the council’s valuation of the price to be paid for the site.