A disused Portslade factory site could be transformed to a climbing and ski centre under new plans.
Hove-based City Gateway Developments, the owners of the former Flexer Sacks site in Wellington Road, have applied for permission to convert the site into a complex of offices and leisure facilities.
The proposed climbing walls, which would be run by Brighton Climbing Centre, would be up to 16m high, making them the tallest indoors in the South of England. They would be alongside artificial ski facilities.
Brighton and Hove City Council’s planning committee will decide on the proposals in the next few weeks.
Hove MP Mike Weatherley yesterday gave his backing to the new proposals. He said: “I welcome these plans for new sporting facilities in my constituency wholeheartedly. The proposed climbing facilities are truly spectacular but, as a former ski instructor myself, I am particularly taken by the idea that skiing will now be possible in Portslade.”
The factory has been unused for more than a decade.
City Gateway was granted the go-ahead for a different set of office and leisure proposals in 2008 but never went ahead with the project, despite Brighton and Hove City Council later waiving a required contribution of £140,000 for local transport and public art after the company said the amounts made the scheme unviable.
That decision prompted concern at the council after it later emerged City Gateway Developments chief, Fash Ghiaci, had donated £2,000 to Hove Conservatives days earlier. He and the council’s leaders said there had been nothing untoward about the situation and no-one was found to be responsible of any wrong-doing.
