The impressive boutique hotel being built in Merthyr Tydfil with its own steak restaurant

A new boutique hotel is set to open in Merthyr Tydfil at the site of a much-loved former bakery. The £1.5m refurbishment will replace the local bakers and confectioners building on High Street owned by Howfield & Son.

The premises is on track to open in September and will feature a nine-bed boutique hotel and 13 flats. There will also be a steak restaurant run by Swansea's Haystack to cater to locals and hotel guests, as well as a bar. Developer RWP Properties secured grant funding of £462,000 and also a £308,000 loan finance from Welsh Government’s Transforming Towns initiative.

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Director of Glynneath-based RWP properties Richard Powell said the company purchased the derelict building knowing it once meant a lot to the people of Merthyr. He said the building had fallen into bad disrepair and he wanted to help breathe new life into it to benefit the town.

He said: "We are trying to create a product in the valleys that you would normally see in a city centre like Cardiff. We've done something very similar in Glynneath where we've done a project - a cocktail bar and restaurant with bedrooms for the famous waterfalls across the road - Sgwd Gwladys, our first venture."

Richard said the hotel will aim to complement Merthyr Tydfil, with a room downstairs dedicated to Bike Park Wales, complete with bike locks, bike wash and a mechanic set to fix broken bikes. He hopes the mix of one and two-bed flats, which are a convenient distance from public transport, will appeal to doctors and nurses working at Prince Charles Hospital.

RWP has also tried to keep as many of the bakery's original features as possible, to maintain the building's unique history. "We've tried to keep as many of the original features as we can," Richard said. "We've kept all the original stone at the back and internally we've kept the original banisters. We haven't been able to save much more than that because the building was falling into disrepair. But we've used original features, wooden window [panes] and used the same colour renders as a couple of hundred years ago."

So far, feedback to the project from locals has been positive. He said: "All the comments have so far been very good. We had one or two questions about parking, but there is parking in the town. We are also having conversations about potentially purchasing things to take care of our own parking. We've dealt with many local councils over the years and in fairness to Merthyr council, it's probably one of the most progressive."

Richard hopes the development will encourage locals to stay in Merthyr Tydfil, while also attracting visitors into the town centre. "We have a high end project which will lift the high street massively," he said. "You will have a really good high-end restaurant there and between this and Casablanca it's giving options to the locals who were previously jumping in the car and going to Cardiff."

Although the plan is just a few months off completion, Richard said there is currently one major thing missing: a name for the hotel. He said he is calling on locals to suggest a name for it. You can suggest a name in the comment section.