Planning application submitted for temporary car park at Chesterfield Hotel site

Chesterfield Borough Council has submitted a planning application to itself seeking permission to open a temporary car park with a total of 88 spaces at the Malkin Street location.

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It was always the borough council’s intention to create a temporary car park there while plans for the future use of the site are developed.

According to the planning application: “It is proposed to utilise the existing car park for the Chesterfield Hotel and form a temporary open surface car park on the footprint of the Chesterfield Hotel.

“The proposal will include appropriate signage, solar pay machines and will be bounded on the exposed north, east and south boundaries with bollards.”

Work to knock down the old hotel – which has stood empty for most of the past seven years – is expected to start soon.

An outline planning application – submitted last summer by the borough council and Prestige Hotels (Midlands) Ltd, owners of the Chesterfield Hotel building – states proposals to erect two buildings at the site in the future.

Exactly what will be inside these two buildings has not been confirmed at this stage – but possible uses include a hotel, residential flats, retail space, leisure place, a crèche and an office.

A borough council spokesperson previously told the Derbyshire Times: “This is an application for outline planning permission for the development of the site – in principle – for a variety of potential uses as part of the wider regeneration plans for this part of the town centre.

“Therefore there is no specific detail about what will be in the two buildings and how they will operate, or any artist impressions, at this stage – this detail will come forward in a full planning application at a later date.”

Chesterfield Hotel, formerly the Station Hotel, opened in 1877 and closed in 2015.

Councillor Tricia Gilby, borough council leader, said in 2020: “Sadly, the costs to remodel and refurbish the building to bring it back into productive use are too high, and it is deemed an unviable option as compared with redevelopment of the site.”

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