Fresh investors sought to progress £300m Blackpool Central scheme

DSM Demolition has been appointed to demolish the site’s old police station, municipal courts and the old joke shop on Central Drive, starting early in the new year, to ensure the site is “shovel-ready”. 

The council’s Executive Committee has agreed to appoint new commercial marketing agents to promote the site to international leisure investors.

This would reopen the site to fresh investment and terminate a prior agreement with developer Nikal Ltd which filed for administration in October, according to the BBC. 

The development has been projected to attract 600,000 new visitors a year with a combined annual spend of £75 million while creating 1,000 new local jobs, touted as “the biggest single investment in Blackpool for more than a century.”

Nikal Ltd had ‘played a key role’ in delivering the major leisure project off the Golden Mile, The Gazette also reported earlier this year.

The cost for the demolition will be met with funding from UK Government as part of the Blackpool Town Deal, which was announced in 2022.

Under the previous Conservative government, the then Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities committed £40 million to relocate the courts, to help enable the Blackpool Central regeneration scheme to go ahead as planned.

The Blackpool Central site sits in the shadow of The Blackpool Tower, next to the Promenade and with a direct driving route from the motorway into the new multi-storey car park. 

Once the site of the busiest train station in the world, the up to 15-acre site will be home to new leisure attractions to add to the town’s £1.7 billion visitor economy and create more jobs for local people.

Cllr Lynn Williams, leader of Blackpool Council, said: “We’re committed to attracting a world-class leisure development that creates jobs for our local people, extends our tourism season to be all year round and supports our local economy to grow. 

“In the last five years at Blackpool Central, we’ve made more progress on this site than the 50 years before it since the Blackpool Central train station closed in the 1960s, largely paid for by the private sector without risking council tax payer’s money.

“The road to regeneration isn’t always smooth but we will not stand still. We will continue our plans to demolish the courts and the police station early in the new year, in order to create a shovel ready site for a new leisure attraction. 

“We have very high standards for the type of attraction which this site needs and any future scheme will have to match those ambitions.

“To deliver on that we need serious investors and we will be heavily marketing this opportunity to get that international calibre of attraction.”

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