Forum Topic

Hotel Building Mania in Central Ealing

In living memory there have been no hotels in Central Ealing. Right now three are under construction and plans for a fourth are with the Council.Just for the record the hotel building sites are 'The Ealing Hotel' in Bond Street, a Travel Lodge Hotel on the south side of the Uxbridge Road and a Premier Inn Hotel on the north side of the Uxbridge Road. The putative fourth hotel (4 Star) would be built directly across the road from the Travel Lodge.Can anyone advise us all why all of a sudden it's viable to create these hotels when for generations it was not viable?

Eric Alan Leach ● 5765d14 Comments

Pension and other financial funds with spare cash??Spare capacity for the olympic games and other events?? I mean, they might even have a nice cinema to go to!!! Somewhere for the better off Poles to stay when visiting?Hopefully having more than 1 means prices would be competitive or somewhat so?Without central Ealing hotels where would you stay?Some capacity in central Ealing is probably no bad thing. But what is the scale?

George Knox ● 5765d

It is all part of the Ealing Council Planning Department turning a blind eye to big developments that destroy Ealing while providing minimal hostile services to the private resident. No doubt if someone opposed these developments (and I hope they do: over to you Mr Leach) Ealing Council's Executive and Planning Department would find a few hundred thousand to employ their mates to progress the planning applications. On the other hand, if someone removed a chimney from the roof of their family house the Planning Department Planning Enforcement "Kafka" would be down on them like a ton of bricks! Ripping the guts out of Ealing with big white elephant projects is in, helping the Ealing resident is not!

Eugene Wroblewsi ● 5765d

314 hotel rooms will be available in 2011. 50 in Bond Street, 99 at Travel Lodge and 165 at the Premier Inn. If the new hotel gets the go ahead at the TVU site that will add another 100 rooms to give us 414 new hotel rooms by 2012.

Eric Alan Leach ● 5764d

Bizarrely, there is also a Best Western Hotel / Apartments being built in West Ealing, along Uxbridge Road (near Costa Coffee).

John Vickers ● 5764d

So suddenly we will have well over 400 new rooms in Ealing.It really makes you wonder what market research has been undertaken by the  ersatz chief proprty policy maker in the Council. If the new capcity is far too great then perhaps planning could have put something different in some of these locations.We will have to see how it pans out. If we do incredibly find that the bookings are heavy then at least there will be some improvement to the GDP of central Ealing.But at the moment I think Ealing policy property policy makers should meet the leaders of the community face to face on a rolling basis.

George Knox ● 5764d

Unfortunately the ersatz policy makers don't do face-to-face. They are all hiding in cupboards waiting for their gold-plated pension packages when they retire while taking as much time off sick as possible under the Unite union!

Jeff Belsen ● 5764d

These hotels will be big buildings (by Ealing's scale). I should imagine that it would be quite easy to convert them into office blocks, high rise dwelings or a mixture of both IF they prove to be unviable. This could well be a trojan horse to get big buildings in. Remember, our planning department and planning enforcement can be quite macchiavellian (did I spell that right) in its dealings with us mere residents. One should only look at the killing that the Daniel family made by lying that the building it was building to replace its department store would be its new department store! What sort of a fast one is our planning department (and planning enforcement department) trying to pull on us in conjunction with these developers? No doubt the bigger the development, the more work and the more fees for the planning department in Ealing (along with all their cronies and consultants). Meanwhile, the ordinary resident is treated like trash because his or her development of an extra bedroom for a teenager is not going to bring in much money to the department.

Maggie Tomlinson ● 5764d

Mr Leach, I think I have an answer to this one. Under a new Bill that entered the House of Commons this week, the Localism Bill, local communities are going to be able to have local referenda on things like planning policy. All it will require is for an august organisation like Save Ealing's Centre (SEC) to get a referendum through to not allow any building over three stories in Ealing to be built as policy and ALL the developers are stuffed! So my guess is that they are trying to get planning permission through for anything that is big and tall and that they CAN get through (like hotels) before any local communities interfere! It is easier to change the use of an existing building then to fight legal local referendised planning policy!

Jeff Belsen ● 5763d

Mr Belsen - you might be right. However what the Localism Bill actually turns out to be is still very much open to conjecture. It sounds too good to be true - and this normally means it is too good to be true.SEC is not really august - it's quite a young sapling of an organistaion. A more appropriate venerable body would be Ealing Civic Society which is over 40 years old.I'm attending a meeting of many London Civic Societies in mid January at which we will all attempt to share opinions about the realities and local ramifications of the Bill.

Eric Alan Leach ● 5763d

We've had this hotel building malarkey in Brentford for years..something to do with the Olympics perhaps?Brentford is a dormitory town now,more's the pity.

Keith Iddon ● 5762d

The point about Brentfrd becoming a dormitory town is a good one. Big buildings like hotels seem to have that effect: a kind of "rain shadow" that means that nothing will grow around them. I hope that that does not happen to Ealing though it seems that our planning policy types are doing everything they can to blight the centre of Ealing with concrete boxes.

Jeff Belsen ● 5762d

Just a small point, but a few years ago I was looking for a hotel room in Ealing and all there was was several dodgy, dark, dank and expensive bed and breakfasts and the Ramada Jarvis, which had expensive rooms, no airconditioning and overlooked (overheard?) North Circ/Uxbridge Road traffic.  My company regularly has staff from overseas staying for a week or more, but nowhere to stay.The Crowne Plaza Hanger Lane and Hotel 55 are options but far away from the Uxbridge Road Office.I think all the new hotels are a good idea.

Barbara Karayi ● 5761d

I can't quite see what the problem is with hotels?  They bring work to the area for the build and ongoing management and upkeep. And presumably the typical hotel guest, business or tourist, will spend in local shops restaurants and pubs - all without excessive extra demand on the local education and welfare facilities

Philip Coe ● 5760d

If hotels are bound to succeed why is it no-one has built one in the central Ealing area since The Drayton Court was built in the 1890s?

Eric Alan Leach ● 5760d