A report produced for the government says a hotel-only option for the old Golf Links Hotel site at Fort Island is not viable.

The Department for Environment, Food and Agriculture appointed consultants Arc to produce a market and viability assessment for the planning application 17/01265/B which would see a 40-bedroom hotel and leisure facilities and 40 flats built to replace the dilapidated building.

Arc’s report has concluded that, given the Covid-19 situation and downturn in the worldwide tourist industry and the seasonal nature of the visitor economy, the site needs to be built for mixed use if it is to be viable.

Dandara’s Fort Island Developments Ltd first submitted plans in December 2017.

Revised plans were lodged in October last year which included changes to the layout of parking and arrangements for surface water and in April 2019 it was announced a viability report would be completed on the plans.

The Arc report has said that the ’option of refurbishment and reinstatement of the existing building is therefore not considered an economic alternative’. It added that the hotel only option is ’not considered likely or feasible’.

One of the issues raised by DEFA is whether the viability of the mixed-use scheme demonstrated the level of non-hotel uses that are required in order to achieve a viable scheme.

Arc’s report said: ’Options exist that involve selling the apartments outright or alternatives enabling owners of the apartments rights to let their units in peak season (or when not in use) through the hotel management company and provide the hotel with greater rooms inventory in certain periods, enhancing its viability as a business. The inclusion of apartment sales whatever end concept is proposed has the potential to generate returns that will dwarf the hotel values and potentially provide the funds for the development to proceed.

’We therefore support this concept as inherently reinforcing any viability case. The principle of some form of apartment/real estate combined with a hotel is an option that could provide an adequate return and justify the hotel scheme creating a resort style development and enabling a hotel being returned to this site.’

Not everyone is in favour of the plans, in a letter to Tynwald members, Derbyhaven Residents’ Society chairman Tim Cullen said the plan represented a ’grave threat’ to ’one of the island’s most precious natural assets’.