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Brighton i360: Attraction’s earnings to fund seafront regeneration

Revenue from the Brighton i360 viewing tower will be ploughed back into the Brighton economy in an attempt to improve the surrounding area.

The council is proposing to borrow £1.4m from the government’s Public Works Loans Board initially to fund the plan. The money would be repaid over 25 years from the council’s earnings from the country’s tallest viewing tower.

The local authority is due to earn around a million pounds a year from a share of ticket sales, interest from lending money to the developers and from business rates.

It would be the latest in a multi-million pound series of projects to radically improve the city’s seafront infrastructure and its allure to visitors. These include the £46m i360 itself, a £5m project underway to restore 60 historic fishermen’s arches, plus £9m for rebuilding the adjoining circular Shelter Hall.

Also in the pipeline are the £540m Waterfront scheme to redevelop the Brighton Centre site with a new arena at Black Rock and creating a new £40m leisure centre and housing at Hove’s King Alfred site.

Two elements of the i360 landscaping project are proposed, covering the space currently used as building yards alongside the tower. To the west of the i360 would be a flexible event space. To the east, a piazza would focus on heritage and the West Pier.

If approved work would start in February and take 20 weeks. The aim is to get the new areas operational as soon as possible after the i360 opens – scheduled for July 2016.

Committee chair and council leader Warren Morgan said: “The i360 is now being built and has to succeed so that taxpayers get a return on their investment, namely the loan from the Public Works Loan Board approved before I was council leader which is paying for the project. I want income that the i360 should generate to be invested back into our seafront infrastructure, including projects like the regeneration of the Madeira Terraces.

“The council no longer has money in the bank to pay for infrastructure projects now, so public/private partnerships, Lottery grants and loans are the only way to bring significant investment in to our city and our seafront.”

The i360 tower is itself being largely funded by a PWLB loan of £36m. PWLB funds are only available for projects linked to profit-making ventures which can repay the loan.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ellen Forster .