Portsmouth: £19m Lakeside hotel all set for autumn opening

Just over halfway through the construction of the latest £19 million Village Hotel, next to the Porsche Centre at Lakeside North Harbour Portsmouth, the official topping-out ceremony took place this month. Teams from Village Hotels, Willmott Dixon, Lakeside North Harbour, and other local dignitaries oversaw the ceremony which marked another landmark in the build of the first new hotel in the area for some considerable time.

With more than 90 tradespeople now on site, the teams are working vigorously towards delivering the finished hotel on time for an autumn opening and within the 61-week construction deadline

The hotel will create around 100 jobs and will include 153 rooms, a leisure club with a 20m swimming pool, gym and fitness studios conference facilities, restaurant, bar, business club and Starbucks. The scheme represents the debut of the new Village Hotel concept, which delivers an evolution of the current Village Hotel offer on a more compact footprint; providing potential for the company to expand into more central urban areas, where sites are, generally, smaller in size.

A spokesperson from the Village Hotels team commented: “We know that the residents, visitors and businesses in and around the Portsmouth area are looking forward to the opening of our new hotel, so we are delighted to mark the halfway point in the build with the topping out.

“The marketing suite will be open shortly so that we can give a flavour of what the region can expect from our mixed-use hotel and leisure facility with its innovative interior design.”

Richard Poulter, deputy managing director of Willmott Dixon, said: "It is great to be here with the whole team to mark the topping out of this exciting new hotel. This is the first of a number of schemes that we are looking to complete with Village Hotels and it is a wonderful point in time to mark on our journey together. The team is making fantastic progress and I look forward to coming back to see the hotel when it is completed and ready for use."

Nick Turner, director of asset management at Northwood Regional UK, added: “We are delighted that the team has got on so well and that the hotel is now a highly visible new landmark on the site at Lakeside North Harbour. Its surroundings are beginning to take shape too, so that local interest is at an all-time high. We are all looking forward to the opening of the marketing suite so that we can get a foretaste of the exciting interior fit-out.”