17 years on from Yates's fire how town centre has changed
When a huge blaze ripped through one of Blackpool’s most prominent buildings 17 years ago, it changed the town centre forever.
Yates’s Wine Lodge, on the corner of Clifton Street and Talbot Square, was an imposing Victorian building with an iconic rotunda, which also happened to be one of Blackpool’s busiest and most popular bars.
After it was destroyed in the fire on February 15, 2009, attention eventually turned to how it could be replaced.
The process of finding a suitable project that could be successfully delivered turned out to be more difficult than anticipated.
Following the fire, the site sat empty for years, cordoned off by high fencing. Residents wondered what would happen to the land.
Plans in 2013-2014 to turn the site into a “retail and leisure complex” (with TGI Fridays and Tesco) did not come to fruition.
Finally, some 12 years after the blaze, a new six-storey Premier Inn hotel opened in 2021, boasting 150-bedrooms and designed to fit into the area.
The £7.1m development saw Barnfield Construction complete the project as part of the wider town centre regeneration.
The new building, known as the Blackpool North Pier Premier Inn, also included a Cookhouse and Pub restaurant on site.
However, even the hotel’s opening did not run smoothly. it was dealyed twice by the Covid lockdwn f 2020 befre its fficial pening the follwing May.
A spokesman for Premier Inn said: “The hotel is in an excellent location for exploring everything Blackpool has to offer. Many of our family friendly bedrooms look directly onto the North Pier and all of Blackpool’s famous attractions are just a short walk away.”
The hotel is now a prominent feature of the transformed Talbot Square area, with the Yates Wine Bar now just a memory to those who remember the good times.