With the Sefton Group announcing the Palace Hotel and Casino is to move into central Douglas, what will become of its current site?

This week, the Sefton Group announced that its biggest shareholder, Auldyn Properties Ltd, had bought the site in the town centre that the group sold to the government five years ago. It also unveiled plans to move the Palace complex onto the site.

That site is called Middlemarch. It borders Walpole Avenue, Fort Street and Lord Street and includes the former police station.

The group has announced that the first stage of the development will be the construction of the a multi-storey car park and a new casino.

Sefton boss Brett Martin said: ’Our stated aim over the last few years has been to relocate our Palace Hotel and Casino operations to lower Douglas.

’The casino operations [will] relocate first, with a new hotel to follow at some point further down the line.’

However, next week - on Monday, May 14 - the Castle Mona will go for auction at Lambert Smith Hampton auctioneers in London with a reserve price of £750,000.

Attached to the listing is the potential for a buyer to buy the Palace complex ’by separate negotiation’.

seafront

With the potential sale of the entire area, described by the auction house as ’totalling approximately six acres which may therefore allow for a much larger seafront scheme centred upon Castle Mona’, these plans could need bringing forward if a buyer was to be found.

The plans have been cautiously welcomed by Douglas Council leader David Christian, who said: ’We welcome development of the Middlemarch site and of course of Lord Street. We also have hopes of Parade Street being developed.

’When there are machines on site and work being done, we’ll be very glad to see it, but we have been here before. I hope the Castle Mona and Palace complex also get the attention needed to them. It will be the biggest site in Douglas to become available.

’This should be good for the building industry, good for Douglas and good for island as this area really is the first thing people see when they get off the boat.’

It is believed that the Middlemarch development is not directly dependent on the Castle Mona or Palace complex sales, meaning a potential move without a buyer for the current Palace complex could leave Douglas promenade with another derelict or empty block. If this occurred, it would mean as more of central Douglas receives redevelopment through the Lord Street plans and now Auldyn Properties Ltd’s Middlemarch plans, it becomes a case of ’rearranging the deckchairs’ as the empty or run down spaces spread across the Douglas sea front.

loan

The purchase of the Middlemarch site from the government comes just over five years since Allan Bell’s government bought the site for £3.2m as part of a controversial bail-out of the group. It saw the site being leased back to the group for five years and was accompanied with a £1.3m loan, repayable over five years.

A Department of Infrastructure spokesman said: ’The Middlemarch site was sold on May 2, 2018 to Middlemarch Limited, a subsidiary of Auldyn Properties Limited, for £3,966,540.

’Government purchased the site for £3,200,000 in 2013 and so realised a £766,540 profit on sale, the lease to Middlemarch Limited, for the use of the site as a temporary car park, expired on April 17, 2018.’

However, it was also revealed by the DoI that ’an extension period for the loan has been given to 31 March 2019’.

While there is no timescale on the Middlemarch development, it is understood that bosses are planning on starting the planning application process in ’months not years’ allaying fears of a continued lack of progress for the prominent site.

The Sefton Group bought the Castle Mona in 2007 and it has been up for sale since 2011. It looked like a buyer had been found last year until that deal fell through.