Huddersfield MP Barry Sheerman has called for a bold plan costing tens of millions of pounds to transform some of Huddersfield’s best-known buildings over the next five years.

For years many of its most iconic buildings including the George Hotel in St George’s Square and the old Co-operative building on New Street have remained closed as their owners struggle to find fresh purposes and buyers for them.

One huge building, the old Warehouse at the back of Huddersfield Rail Station, has remained virtually untouched, he said, since he became Huddersfield’s MP back in 1979. It is owned by a Pakistani multi-millionaire about whom very little is known.

Mr Sheerman said he was hoping to meet Dr Altaf Hussain, who bought the George Hotel, for around £900,000 almost four years ago, this week to see what, if anything, was happening.

He is also anxious to see how much work has been done inside.

St George's Warehouse, Huddersfield.

Dr Hussain had big plans for the landmark Victorian building and was granted planning permission to turn the Grade II listed building into a boutique hotel with 11 apartments and a rooftop bar.

However, none of this ever came to fruition and in December 2015 he put the building on the market for £3 million where it remains unsold, despite offers.

Junior Rashid, who owns the successful Lala’s Indian restaurant, across the road from the George, offered to pay £1.5 million for it but was rebuffed while Simmy Sekhon, a Bradford businessman who owns major properties in Huddersfield town centre, has also said he would be interested in buying it.

As for the Co-operative building on New Street, it is still up for sale – almost two years after it was put on the market.

The dilapidated, five-storey building opened as a Co-op Departmental Store in 1936 but has been not been used since 2004. Its last use was a nightclub, Club Heaven & Hell.

There were plans to redevelop the building as a mixture of apartments as well as a restaurant but nothing has come of them.

The former Co-op building on New Street, Huddersfield

Other buildings Mr Sheerman would like to see redeveloped are fire-ravaged Newsome Mills, the huge site once occupied by the former Huddersfield Sports Centre, the former Huddersfield Technical College and the Castle Hill site which once boasted a popular pub.

Mr Sheerman said: “In five years time we could transform the town with this blueprint. I’d like to see a really beautiful hotel at The George with a strong Rugby League theme given its history and as for the old Warehouse nearby, almost nothing has been done there since I became an MP though it is a very, very important building.

“I’d also really like to see Huddersfield get a top-class, fabulous conference and performance centre where the performing arts could flourish. And somewhere where Huddersfield Museum and Central Library could be relocated. My ambition for that would be for something totally modern to be developed.

“There would even be the possibility of linking it in with the cable car idea for the multi-million pound plans for HD1 down at Leeds Road.

“As for the old technical college perhaps we could have another specialist university in Huddersfield on that site? That would be a real challenge to develop that site.

Huddersfield MP Barry Sheerman.
Huddersfield MP Barry Sheerman.

“And I’d like to see developers get to grips with Newsome Mills and begin the regeneration of Newsome.

“It’s high time too that we had a business centre and hotel with a lovely place to have a meal at Castle Hill. I’m working with a group behind-the-scenes on that.”

To achieve all this he said there would need to be budget of tens of millions of pounds as well as a concerted effort from Kirklees Council, the University of Huddersfield, developers, architects and businessmen.