Property developer Dandara has supplied further planning information in its continuing bid to redevelop the derelict Castletown Golf Links Hotel site, following the planning director’s recommendation in April that the application (17/01265/B) be refused unless sufficiently amended.
The application is for a four-star plus hotel with leisure and spa facilities together with 40 residential flats.
Fort Island Developments Limited (FIDL), which is part of the Dandara group, recently submitted new information to address points raised by the Department of Infrastructure’s highways division.
amendments
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There are also minor amendments to parking space arrangement, footpath alignment, cycle and bin stores and electric vehicle (EV) charging points.
The planning director had cited several concerns about the existing hotel plans, including noise, parking space issues, and the environmental impact considering the development’s size.
The director concluded in April that as the application stood, it would create a ’residential development in an area unsuitable for such a purpose’ and ’at a scale that would be harmful not just to the landscape but to the protected ASSI (Area of Special Scientific interest).
The director also cited concerns about the long-term commercial viability of the hotel, saying that the planned one ’appears to lack elements that would make it a quality destination hotel’.
In the latest submission of planning information, Dandara addressed these commercial viability issues by providing a letter from real estate services firm Avison Young, and defending the proposed hotel’s viability in a planning statement.
Avison Young found the planned development to be viable ’from an operational perspective’, but noted the substantial build costs would result in the development generating a negative return on investment.
FIDL, which first submitted its multi-million pound plans for a new hotel and flats in 2017, maintains that the entire redevelopment will only be viable if the hotel element is successful, with FIDL planning for the hotel to be able to cater to a range of function sizes, with its design subject to changes.
The millionaire owner of Castletown Golf Links earlier put in an offer to buy the derelict hotel next door, but Philip Vermeulen said he received no response from Dandara, which owns it.