YATE looks set to become home to a nightclub for the first time in a decade if plans are approved next week.
Owners of the former Riley’s snooker club, on East Walk in Yate Shopping Centre, are hoping to be granted a licence to open the premises as a nightclub under the name Waves.
It comes 10 years after the popular night spot Spirals closed in the same location and follows a Facebook campaign, with more than 1,500 members, to open a club in Yate.
Owner Mark Coles, who previously ran the Riley’s snooker club, has told the council he will employ stringent security checks and a number of crime prevention measures including CCTV inside and out and trained door staff. No drinks will be allowed outside and bar staff will use the challenge 25 scheme under which they are required to ask for identification if anyone looks under 25.
Mr Coles has applied for the nightclub to open until 12.30am Sunday to Wednesday and until 2.30am on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
Steve Evans, director of community services at South Gloucestershire Council which is due to decide the licensing application at a meeting next Tuesday, said there were a number of residential properties close to the venue.
"The area is highly residential, with many of these properties situated to the rear of the premises, including flats above retail outlets and further residential properties across Station Road, from which a number of interested parties have made representations," he said.
"Yate Shopping Centre benefits from its own ‘in house security team’ who have expressed a desire for this application to proceed."
Avon and Somerset police said negotiations over the licence had been positive.
A spokesman said: "Negotiations are ongoing and constructive and positive conversations have taken place and will continue."
The building has been vacant since Riley’s closed in June last year after the company went into administration.
The nightclub plans coincide with a planning application to turn four shops on the other side of the shopping centre, on South Parade, into a J D Wetherspoon pub. Both proposals have been welcomed by town officials who have long hoped to create an evening economy in Yate.
Dodington parish councillor Paul Hulbert said: "It is nice to see something a bit more adventurous than just shops in the town centre. "I know many young people who are happy to see these applications as it would be somewhere different to go than just Chipping Sodbury High Street or into Bristol."
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