Second city centre coffee shop to close – as plans for neighbourhood café are revealed

Café chain Costa is to close another of its branches in the centre of York.

The branch on the ground floor of the Premier Inn in Blossom Street will serve its final customers on August 29.

Posters placed in the windows say: “We would like to thank you all for your loyalty and custom over the last 10 years.”

Costa and Premier Inn were both owned by Whitbread Plc, but the firm sold Costa to Coca Cola at the start of the year for £3.8 billion, and said it would focus its attention on Premier Inn.

YorkMix invited Costa earlier this week to comment on the closure, but it has not done so.

It is the second Costa to close recently in York. Last year, the branch at the back of WH Smith in Coney Street shut to make way for the Post Office, which has relocated from Lendal.

New place

Meanwhile, at the same time as Costa closes, another new cafe looks set to open in the city, just a few minutes’ walk away.

Plans have been submitted to convert the old Campbell & Penty office on the corner of Holgate Road and Mount Ephraim. The corn and seed merchant has vacated the building, which used to be a shop and which has been a listed building since 1997.

No occupant is named in the planning documents, but the developer intends to reintroduce some features similar to those in an 1858 photo of the building, including reinstating a door on the corner of the building and putting up hanging lamps similar to those in the old photo.

Gaby Higgs, the agent for the developer, said in the application that the plans would create a viable future for a listed building and said: “The proposals provide the neighbourhood with a cafe, which creates a community local meeting place.”