Council buy for a demolition job

Jan 16 2008 by Sam Casey, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

KIRKLEES Council has bought an old nightclub for £2.1m – so it can be demolished.

The council wants the former Heaven and Hell Club, at New Street, Huddersfield, knocked down to make way for the £200m Queensgate Revival project.

The council struck a deal with Looks Investment plc to buy the four-storey building at the end of last year.

Looks Investment had planned to convert the site into more than 100 swanky student flats, but decided the proposals were not viable.

Now the building will be bulldozed as part of a major town centre revamp.

The Queensgate Revival project is set to bring about changes to the Piazza and surrounding area.

Plans include space for a major department store, 160 new shops, cafes, bars and restaurants, 170 residential flats and a 100-bed hotel.

If a planning application is submitted and approved, a new library and art gallery would be built at the corner of Princess Alexandra Walk and Peel Street, while the existing library would be refitted for shops and leisure facilities.

The Market Hall would be modernised and an open space was proposed between the Town Hall and New Street on the site of Ramsden House, which would have to be acquired for demolition.

Other features would include a footbridge to the university and an underground car park with 1,350 spaces in place of the multi-storey car park.

Council officers were authorised to buy the property at 103 New Street for the council at a meeting of Kirklees Council’s Tory cabinet in July last year with the intention that it should be cleared for the Queensgate scheme.

The former nightclub, on the corner of Chapel Hill, opened in 1936 as the Co-op textiles department. It also housed the Co-op Funeral Service.

Blackpool-based Entrepreneurial Leisure Ltd spent £2.2m to turn it into Heaven and Hell in 2002. But the club shut within two years after losing money. It has been empty ever since.