HOT snacks and extended opening hours will be on the menu at Castle Park Arts Centre cafe if it clinches a deal to improve public catering facilities as part of the Frodsham park’s £3m restoration project.
Cheshire West and Chester Council has invited the arts centre to submit plans to develop its cafe to cater for the increasing number of people expected to visit the historic park. The arts centre is run as a charitable trust, managed and manned mainly by volunteers, and developing the cafe would boost its own visitor numbers and generate much-needed extra income.
Arts centre trustees have now set up a working party to submit proposals by July 31.
They have already secured grant funding from waste recycling group WREN to pay for a planned new entrance and refurbishment of the toilets at the arts centre.
Dr Ron Callender, who stepped down as arts centre trustees chairman last week but remains on the cafe working party, said: “The arts centre cafe is already well established and quite popular and we are hoping to build on that. It currently offers light refreshments, but it could be that people could drop in for hot snacks, such as a bowl of soup, sausage rolls and pasties, and maybe we could even offer meals.
“All we need to do is be prepared for double the number of visitors and to open in the evening and early morning.
“It’s a very exciting prospect for the arts centre and I’m very confident everything is going to fit into place.”
