Plans for hotel by CBS Arena stall after funding expires

Wasps' failed hotel plan would have contributed £120,000 a year in business rates to the public purse

Plans for a new hotel next to the CBS Arena in Coventry have stalled, after funding for the project expired.

The council granted arena owners Wasps permission for a long lease on a car park in 2018 to deliver the project and £12.2m of loan funding was secured from the West Midlands Combined Authority.

The WMCA has now said Wasps owner Derek Richardson has missed the deadline to draw down the loan money for the hotel.

A spokesperson for the club said it did not comment on commercial matters.

The city council has also said Wasps did not pay the money to the local authority for the lease. The time limit for the rugby union club to take on that long lease has now also expired.

The WMCA confirmed Mr Richardson has missed the deadline to draw down the loan money for the hotel - and a new application would need to be made if the funding was needed in future.

The application for WMCA funding for the hotel was made by the Wasps owner and signed off in July last year. It is entirely separate to a recent approach for financial support from the authority.

A WMCA spokesman said: "That loan has not been drawn upon and the standard time period for such agreements has now expired.

"A new approval that adheres to any conditions and meets satisfactory due diligence would now be required for this to move forward.

"The hotel loan application is an entirely different matter to any request for financial support for Wasps."

Regeneration of area

The rugby club recently made a separate approach to the WMCA about funding, as the business struggles to refinance £35m of debt owed to bondholders.

Bondholders are due to be consulted in the next few days on whether they would be willing to extend the repayment date for the bonds.

The delivery of a hotel and wider development of car park C has been a long-term aspiration for the council, which sees it as an important part of the regeneration of the area.

Wasps' failed hotel plan was predicted to have created 28 jobs and would have contributed £120,000 a year in business rates to the public purse.

A spokesman for the council said: "The long lease of Car Park C would only ever have passed over on delivery of the hotel and the payment of the premium.

"As this has not happened the long lease for the hotel has never been granted."