YORK'S eyesore White Swan Hotel should be revamped to provide community facilities and a performance venue, the Green Party said today.

But the idea has drawn criticism from City of York Council leader Steve Galloway.

The Greens said the transformation of the long-empty hotel in Piccadilly should be part of the planning brief for the Castle/Piccadilly redevelopment site.

Coun Mark Hill, pictured, said: "The Greens want to see community facilities included in the brief and have called for the White Swan Hotel site to be reused to incorporate such facilities and a potential performance venue. Provision of civic, heritage and community facilities can ensure that the area is safe and populated in the evenings and does not become deserted by 6pm."

But council leader Steve Galloway said the hotel was separated from the main redevelopment site by the shops built in the first phase of the Coppergate Centre project, and could not be included in the planning brief.

He also said the council could not make the owners of the White Swan bring it back into any kind of use, no matter how desirable this might be. It would not, for example, be able to purchase the site using compulsory purchase orders (CPO).

Coun Galloway also said that performance venues were being planned at other sites in the city, including Hungate and St Mary's Precinct, and there was a danger of creating a surfeit.

"We could end up with more performance venues than there are actors!" he said.

York Civic Trust chairman Darrell Buttery had similar concerns, saying there was a lack of proven demand for such venues, and a "wonderful" such centre had been promised as part of the Hungate scheme.

He said it was an "absolute disgrace" the way the White Swan had been allowed to remain "untidily fallow" for so long, but he did not favour extending compulsory purchase orders from the main redevelopment site to that end of Piccadilly.

Meanwhile, Coun Hill has also said that the brief, which is out to public consultation until Friday, was a "dangerously vague" document, and needed a dose of "good Yorkshire bluntness".

He wanted an area of the site between Clifford's Tower and Piccadilly to be specifically set aside in the brief for open space, retaining a view of the historic tower.

"Without any target, all we are left with is vague encouragement to 'enhance the historic character' on an 'open carpet' in a 'sphere of influence'," he said.

"What is needed is some old-fashioned Yorkshire plain talking: keep the plan in plain English, keep the tower in plain view."

Updated: 09:37 Wednesday, October 12, 2005