Covid adds up to £3m to price tag for new Inverness project by Patio Hotels to convert former Highland Council offices in Church Street into a new four-star 77-bedroom KIN hotel
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A major city centre construction project, which was halted due to the pandemic, will cost up to £3 million more to build, it has been revealed.
Patio Hotels, which owns Kingsmills and Ness Bank hotels in the city, had been planning to convert former Highland Council offices in Church Street into a new four-star 77-bedroom hotel but work was put on hold when Covid-19 restrictions hit the building trade.
Originally the build cost for the project was expected to be £8 million. It has now increased to more than £10 million.
Work was under way to remove asbestos from the building and that was completed by the beginning of 2020 with the building certified as safe.
Managing director Tony Story said: “That building was plagued by asbestos and what we opted to do was to do an enabling contract to strip out the building and remove all the asbestos because a lot of people don’t like getting involved in that and taking the risk. It’s highly dangerous stuff.”
He said they had to suspend operations when Covid hit because they had not finalised the contract.
“Once Covid got out of the way we went to the original contractor, but they were getting into difficulties which was quite sad,” he said.
He said they approached a contractor who repriced it and came back with a figure of about between £2.5 million and £3 million more than they had originally agreed with the other company.
Mr Story said the new price was “riddled with Covid increases”.
He added: “It’s amazing but timber, steel and anything that contains some kind of metal content has increased, with some of them we are talking more than 180 per cent increase.”
He said negotiations with the new contractor were at an advanced stage.
Mr Story said it was a lengthy and complex project.
“Although the building is already there it’s quite complex because what we have to do is take out all of these concrete infill panels and, because it’s a concrete construction, we effectively leave this skeleton of the old building and then we will have to build it all back up again,” he said.
He said that he was hopeful that, within the next three or four months, the project could be restarted, adding: “We are now in discussion with the contractors and also our financial partners to get the thing going again.”
Mr Story said: “That is just the build contract, it is not the total cost of the contract. It is like a 25 per cent increase, if we are lucky.
“Talk about timing – if Covid was six months later or I was six months earlier – I think we would have been finished by now.”
Once completed the new hotel will be called KIN – a four-star city centre young persons’ hotel and for the young at heart.
The former council service point building had stood empty for three years before Patio Hotels bought it.
