Hull is planning a £50m cruiser terminal in a bid to attract a new bracket of visitors to the city, which is just about to celebrate the end of its year as the UK Capital of Culture.

Grace Chatterton, project manager – major projects & infrastructure at Hull City Council, told Built Environment Networking’s Hull & Humberside Development Plans conference, that the authority has appointed internal and professional teams to deliver the project. And she said Hull is looking for an operator to run the facility, a site for which has been earmarked in the authority’s local plan.

As well as bringing new visitors to the city, Chatterton told the event that the creation of a terminal would reinforce changing perceptions of the city, adding that the second phase of the regeneration of Hull’s Indoor Market, which is located between the Fruit Market and Old Town neighbourhoods, is due to open at the end of this year. The first phase of the scheme, which is designed to bring more people into the city centre by turning the market into a hot food destination, is complete.

Chatterton added that Bam Construction had been procured to build the planned new £39m Hull Venue which is due to open in summer 2018.

And she said that the city had secured £27m from the Heritage Lottery Funding to revamp its Maritime Heritage Museum. As well as refurbishing and extending the museum itself, Chatterton said the grant would fund the construction of a dockside interpretation centre and the relocation in a dry dock of Arabian Corsair, the only working trawler that has been designated as a historical monument.

Within the city centre, she said the private development pipeline included the £130m Bond and Albion Street project, which will deliver 250 residential units, a minimum of 12,000 sq ft of shops and 600 car parking spaces.

Chatterton said that Hull had identified a total of 105 ha of employment land and sites for 11,600 homes, which was more than the 10,000 required by government, in its fully adopted local plan.

The event also heard about plans to tap into Humberside’s rapidly growing renewable energy sector.

Stephen Willis, chief finance office of the University of Hull said it had applied for government support for a Renewable Energy Innovation Centre, which is designed to support the Orsted offshore wind farm being developed by Siemens and energy company Dong

Jo Barnes of the Hull based Sewell Group said her company was anticipating a decision in the spring on its plans for the Yorkshire Energy Park in the East Riding. She said that the company had submitted outline planning permission in May for the scheme, which is being developed on a 200-acre site that belongs to Hull council. Barnes said the centrepiece of the scheme is a 49MW energy centre, which would offer cut price power to firms located on the park as well as to the National Grid. “The real benefit of this site is cheap energy which we will be able to offer at 20-25% less than the market because it will be generated on site.” She said the company aimed to create 1,000 new jobs with its scheme which features around 1m sq ft of manufacturing, storage & office space.

David Morris, head of property at ABP Humber, said the port operator’s projects in the area included a £310m offshore wind turbine production facility, which it is bringing forward on a design and build basis. The facility boasts a 39,600 sq m unit for manufacturing 75m-long turbine blades and 12,300 sq m of space for their ongoing servicing and maintenance. It also includes 48 hectares of open land for storing, assembling and loading the turbines and towers.

Anastasija Clayton, of the accelerated delivery team at the Homes and Communities Agency, told the event that it is working with Humberside’s local enterprise partnership to develop the area’s offsite housing manufacturing (OSM) homes sector. The HCA would seek to stimulate the local OSM sector by bringing forward land for such projects, she said: “There is already big presence of OSM in the area but we need a pipeline of sites to increase production. We are working with the LEP on how to deliver that.”

She said that the agency’s projects in Humberside included support for a 1,650 mixed tenure urban extension in North Hull.