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HOTSPOTS BLACKPOOL By Ged Henderson IN ASSOCIATION WITH:
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DEADLINE FRIDAY 5 DECEMBER
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WISHING YOU WERE HERE
We took a trip to the seaside in our latest hotspot visit. We brought business, education and local government leaders together at Blackpool and The Fylde College to discuss the issues on their minds
Blackpool continues to show its towering ambition. Not least in its vitally important tourism sector. At the heart of its ambition is completing the transformation of the resort into a year-round destination.
And as it says in the town’s motto, there is progress. The season is longer than it has ever been, stretching into the winter months and taking in the February half-term.
An extension of Blackpool’s famous Illuminations season sees the lights along the Prom shine from the end of August until early January.
All of that has been backed by a £4.5m modernisation programme that has seen new features added and lighting technology updated.
There has been large-scale investment into a programme of events in the resort and in
addition venues like Pleasure Beach Resort have extended their seasons, with initiatives and attractions to tempt visitors in what has traditionally been the off-season.
Nick Gerrard, growth and prosperity programme director at Blackpool Council, says creating an all-year-round tourism economy is one of the major objectives of its £2bn transformation plan.
The figures show why it is so vital to that plan. It is a £1.98bn local industry which supports more than 22,000 jobs across the Fylde coast. Blackpool attracts over 21 million visitors annually.
The creation of a year-round resort would boost those figures and have major economic benefits. The development of the Blackpool Central site has been positioned to have a key role in achieving the objective.
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However, there has been a setback. The site, just off the Golden Mile, is back on the market following the collapse of a planned £300m world-class, year-round leisure destination development last year.
The end came after Nikal, the developer behind the plan – described as the largest single investment in the town for more than a century and ‘one of the UK’s most important regeneration projects’ – appointed administrators.
Its development aimed to create up to 1,000 jobs, bring an estimated 600,000 additional visitors each year, and boost annual spend in the resort by £75m.
The collapse of the project was the latest in a series of attempts to regenerate the site of Blackpool Central station. It was once
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