A high-class shopping complex and a 55-bedroom riverside budget hotel - representing a £13 million investment in York city centre - look set to get the green light from planning chiefs tomorrow.

The shop units, to be built in Davygate on the site of the British Gas showroom, the next door caf and the car park behind, and the hotel, to be built around Varvill's Warehouse on Queen's Staith, are set to pull in more visitors to the city as well as providing two distinctive and modern buildings.

Architect Simon Hudspith, said the Davygate shops would involve an investment of £8 million with £2.5 million of this being spent on construction.

He said the units were being designed to attract a high calibre of retailer and the owners, Standard Life Investment Fund Ltd, had also applied for permission to use one of them for food and drink.

There would be four, two-storey shop units, all stone and glass-fronted and opening onto Davygate, with one large unit above them, all built in a contemporary design.

Mr Hudspith said: "We haven't got any particular businesses on board as yet but we've had very strong interest in the development."

He said if planning permission was given, demolition and building work would start as soon as possible and it was hoped the shops would be opened by Easter 1999.

Council officer, David Johnson, will tell councillors tomorrow: "This scheme amounts to a significant vote of confidence in retailing in the city centre.

"This investment will help remove a concrete 1960s building from the city centre providing a modern building of high quality architecture and retailing on two floors."

The 55-bedroom hotel, which will take in Varvill's Warehouse, is set to be built on land between Queen's Staith and Skeldergate and behind Bridge Street, at a cost of around £5 million.

The Greenalls Pubs and Restaurants group wants to create a new building around the old warehouse, to add to its nationwide chain of "budget lodge" hotels.

Planning consultant, Alison Freeman, said the hotels were built to a three star standard, but offered two star or lower prices and were aimed at both business people and families.

The five-storey building would have a basement car park - which Mrs Freeman said would be vacated during flood warning periods - a main entrance on Queen's Staith Road, a restaurant with its own separate entrance on Queen's Staith itself, a reception area, and would have a modern design which still reflected the warehouse next door.

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