Revealed: Portrush's new £15m hotel

Scottish based C&V Developments has submitted an application to the Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council for a site close to the start/finish line of the North West 200 circuit at Ballyreagh Road.

As we revealed in May, the hotel - which will incorporate conference facilities for around 350 people, a spa and leisure complex, holiday cottages and a restaurant - will create around 120 new jobs with an investment of £15 million.

A detailed planning application and consultation report is expected to be submitted by August this year and building work could start around March 2017.

The developers hope that the building project could be completed and the hotel will open in August 2018.

The couple behind the project - Vivienne Gilholm, a director of C&V Developments, and a native of Portrush, and her husband Colin, were among those present at a consultation day in a marquee at the hotel site last Saturday.

Also attending was Tim Ferguson, a planning consultation, from Ballycastle and the project’s architect, Portrush man Ben Wilson of Wilson McMullen Architects.

Concept drawings, information boards and a detailed masterplan brief on the design process were available for visitors to peruse.

Vivienne said yesterday that negotiations were being held with a number of hotel operators but stressed that the new hotel would be ‘a destination’ hotel with its own unique personality.

“We hope to have the planning application together with a consultee report submitted by the end of August. We are looking at a two year build and hope to be open in good time for the Open Golf in 2019.”

She added that the hotel would have a dedicated office and exhibition space which will be used by the Coleraine and District Motor Club, the organisers of the International North West 200.

Based in Selkirk in the Scottish Borders, C&V Developments have been involved in high quality building projects both in Scotland and the north of England.