Site for sore eyes Will hotel horror story have a happy ending?

Following news the Grosvenor Hotel has been put on the market, Tristan Cork explores the history of one of Bristol's most notorious eyesores...

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T is one of the first things visitors arriving in Bristol see once they get off the train, or the airport shuttle bus, at Temple Meads and start to make their way to the city centre a half-demolished building standing in a rubble-strewn empty site.

The Grosvenor Hotel, or what's left of it, is one of the most notorious and controversial sites in Bristol, and its broken building hides a bizarre saga of decay, grudges, con artists, million pound jewellery and dramatic fires.

The building and the site itself is important. It sits alongside the completely covered up shell of the old George and Railway hotel next door, and the rusting husk of a long-shut down and boarded up petrol station, and for years those in charge of the city have said they intend to do something about all three, but have done nothing tangible at all.

All three sites now sit within the Temple Quarter Enterprise Zone, but while redevelopment and regeneration gathers pace on the 'back' of Temple Meads station to the east, around the 'front', on the city centre side, it appears the Grosvenor and the other two sites may well be the last places to be cleared and redeveloped.

Now, finally, after years of doing little with the site apart from stubbornly resisting any attempts, both inside and outside court, by Bristol City Council to sort out, refurbish, demolish or just sell the site, the hotel's owner Nimish Popat has put it on the market.

The Post reported yesterday it is being marketed for offers in excess of £12 million, with optimistic words about student flats or a hotel rising from its rubble-strewn ashes.