Victoria and Jubilee Car Parks in Harrogate are to close on Tuesday 7 February for an Asda conference in the town.
To facilitate the new conference at the Harrogate International Centre, Harrogate Borough Council has agreed to provide additional parking for delegates at the Victoria and Jubilee car parks in Harrogate town centre.
There are an expected 2,000 visitors bringing 1,200 vehicles to the town on the day. HBC have said that a volume of vehicles like that would cause Health and Safety issues due to the visitor traffic circling the town to find a place to park. It would also cause gridlock.
- Victoria car park off East Parade will be closed to the public (other than disabled) on Tuesday 7 February 2017.
- Jubilee Car Park on Union Street will be closed to the public on Tuesday 7 February 2017.
- Dragon Road car park will be closed between Saturday 4 February and Thursday 9 February 2017.
- All the other car parks in the town will be available to the public to use
Season card holders will be affected by the closure of the car parks have been provided with details of alternative parking arrangements.
This conference will cause inconvenience to the local people of Harrogate, but HBC is urging people to look at the bigger picture in what the HIC provides to the town’s economy. They also say that the inconvenience will be similar to a busy shopping day coming up to Christmas.
It is not clear why a shuttle service from the Yorkshire Showground has not been used or why the event is not being held from the Yorkshire Event Centre(YEC) at the Showground site – that location would have avoided the negative impact to the town centre.
There are also questions why there are such a volume of conference goers not using public transport to reach the town. It also goes against both the County Council and Borough Council’s own strategy with getting local people away from street parking and to off-street parking.
Councillor Rebecca Burnett, Harrogate Borough Council’s Cabinet Member for Planning and Sustainable Transport, said: We are immensely pleased that major corporate clients have the confidence in Harrogate, as a town and an event venue, to bring thousands of people to the district.
While client confidentiality means we often cannot reveal our large corporate customers, they often bring hundreds or even, as in case here, thousands of visitors to Harrogate.
Business visitors to Harrogate International Centre put an estimated £60million into the economy each year through spending in local restaurants, hotels and shops so it’s good to know we have all the Infrastructure readily in place to welcome them.
We understand that the closure of Victoria and Jubilee Car Parks may cause some inconvenience to our usual customers, however the town has a wide range of on street and off street parking opportunities which can be used whilst the two car parks are closed.