A PROPERTY developer is expecting Great Yarmouth to go through a boom period when the outer harbour opens and plans to cash in by investing in a new upmarket restaurant and café on the seafront.

A PROPERTY developer is expecting Great Yarmouth to go through a boom period when the outer harbour opens and plans to cash in by investing in a new upmarket restaurant and café on the seafront.

The Bobbins Family Trust is looking to redevelop the Hollywood Café, Memoire Hotel and Sunshine Lodge guest house on Marine Parade to provide contemporary dining facilities, which could include wine and lounge bars, and six new flats.

Antony Pettifer, planning and design consultant for the Trust, said: “The developers have got the confidence to invest in Great Yarmouth, thinking in particular of the new casino and outer harbour developments. They are prepared to put some money in to renovate the external envelope of the buildings.”

If the borough council's development control committee approves the plans, the Norfolk-based Trust will convert the ground floor of the terraced properties with the restaurant situated where Sunshine Lodge now stands, while Hollywood Café's facilities would be updated to provide a more modern feel.

Money will also be spent renovating the building's Victorian ironwork as well as reinstating the Juliet balconies in front of the windows so residents of the flats on the upper floors can look out over the sea.

Mr Pettifer said the aim was to provide a continental feel to the restaurant and added another aim was to trade all-year round.

“The café will be a destination café so it does not rely on the holiday trade. It will be something that the residents of Great Yarmouth can use and frequent without shutting in September.”

Dean Minns, the borough council's development control manager, said the developer had submitted a statement explaining that changing patterns of behaviour among holidaymakers towards foreign trips with better weather had led to a decline in income for hotels.

If the plans are given the go ahead, the restaurant will form part of a row of catering establishments along the section of Marine Parade close to the end of Regent Road, which include the Pub on the Prom and The Longbar.

Mr Minns said the developers stated the café was “under-utilised and required investment” in the application, submitted on December 11.

The café's owner Paul Scott has moved to Thailand and is in the process of selling the business to the Trust.

A decision on whether to approve the application was likely to be made by the council's development control committee at the end of January.