Almost ready: the aparthotel on Altyre Road – handy for the Magistrates’ Court – could be open by Christmas
The first phase of “The Canopy”, the aparthotel on Altyre Road, could be complete before Christmas.
That’s according to Addiscombe West’s Labour councillors, who recently took a tour of the building site, as the former Croydon Park Hotel is being converted into 246 studios and apartments – with massive potential for being rented out to London councils for use in the housing crisis as temporary accommodation.
The Croydon Park Hotel was briefly owned by Croydon Council, after a dodgy deal which helped crash the borough’s finances.
An “aparthotel” is a serviced apartment building that uses a hotel booking system and provides hotel-style services. Each apartment usually has a self-contained layout, separate living and sleeping areas, and its own kitchen or kitchenette.
There is a hotel-style reception, regular housekeeping and concierge services.
All mod cons: one of the apartments in The Canopy
Apartments may be booked for a single night or several months, using standard hotel check-in without long-term rental contracts.
The developers, Amro Partners, had previously obtained planning permission for a £220million scheme to demolish much of the hotel and replace it with 39- and 36-storey towers with 447 flats, calling it “The Botanical”. But after a three-year hiatus, and in a sign of rising development costs and rampant unaffordability of new builds, especially in London, Amro abandoned that proposal and instead opted for a more cost-effective aparthotel refurbishment.
Having fleeced one local authority – Croydon – once in their bargain basement acquisition of the Croydon Park Hotel site, Amro may be looking to make another killing from public funds, with the possibility that they might rent out their apart hotel apartments to councils to use as temporary accommodation in a housing crisis.
According to Amro’s website, the one-bedroom, two-person apartments in The Canopy are to be rented out for £1,400 per month. For that, you get free wifi, gym membership and don’t have to pay any Council Tax.
Bargain: how Amro were marketing The Canopy aparthotel
The 4-star Croydon Park Hotel, which opened in 1984, had 211 rooms, including doubles and some “junior suites”.
The Croydon Park Hotel closed in the midst of the covid lockdowns in 2020, when the site was owned by Croydon Council. It had been used for a time to provide emergency accommodation during the pandemic.
Dodgy deal: Tony Newman
The council’s purchase of the Croydon Park Hotel in 2018 remains a lasting controversy, not only because the then council leader, Tony Newman, and his finance henchman, Simon Hall, pushed the deal through without proper scrutiny and debate, but because they somehow agreed to buy the freehold of the hotel for £29.8million – £5million more than the asking price.
That wasn’t the end of the dodgy deals, though.
The 2021 sale by the council for a bargain basement £25million under the then Labour-run council also raised questions. Amro were at the time clients of Terrapin Group, the developers’ PR firm where Stuart King, then the Croydon Council cabinet member responsible for property disposals, worked as a director.
Councillor King has always maintained that he played no part in the sale of the Croydon Park Hotel.
Read more: Council paid £5m above asking price for Croydon Park Hotel
Read more: Croydon Park to reopen in 2027 as ‘The Canopy’ apart-hotel
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