New Harrogate venue seeks 3am alcohol licence

A new venue called The Wicked Wolf is asking permission to serve alcohol until 3am in a high-profile Harrogate town centre site.

Unit 3 of the Royal Baths, which is next to Wetherspoons, was once home to the Potting Shed, Rift & Co and Revolution but has been empty for five years.

Kevin David Spencer has submitted a premises licence application to site owner North Yorkshire Council which accepted an offer to rent it out this year.

It spans a massive 7,000 square feet and the council had it on the market for £120,000 a year.

According to the application, The Wicked Wolf wants to serve alcohol between 10am and 3am, seven days a week.

The public can make representations about the application until July 31 by emailing the council at the following address: licensing.har@northyorks.gov.uk

The council will decide whether to grant the licence at a later date.

The grade two listed Baths was purchased by North Yorkshire County Council in 2018, however its value has fallen from £9.5m before the covid pandemic to £7m, according to a report.

The council’s director of finance Gary Fielding blamed the drop in how much the building is worth on a “general drop in market sentiment” towards the retail and night-time sectors.

The most recent tenant, the Potting Shed, closed in 2019 after less than a year in Harrogate when its parent company went into administration.

Part of the Baths is rented to a Chinese restaurant and the council moved the Tourist Information Centre to the pump room museum earlier this year.

Another one of the units facing Parliament Street was let to the Viper Rooms nightclub until 2022 when the council changed the locks and 30 staff lost their jobs just a couple of weeks before Christmas.

Despite the council saying in February that it had accepted an offer on the former Viper Rooms building it remains empty with ‘to let’ signs still up outside.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service has asked the council for an update but is yet to receive a response.