A potential buyer for the Castle Mona has come forward to reveal multi-million pound redevelopment plans that would transform the face of Douglas.

But island-based Alan Rice, who is leading the negotiations for the international investment group the Wild Coast Group, says a series of agreements will need to be signed with the Sefton Group soon if the Castle Mona is not instead to be sold off at auction in July.

He said: ’The Castle Mona is just part of the jigsaw. We need to have agreements on all the elements and the clock is ticking. It’s all interlocked and without one of the elements this development will not happen.

’The total package will enhance the town and promenade itself and provide modern facilities that have been lacking on the various sites, which will certainly help residents, tourists and business alike.’

Under the proposals, the Castle Mona will be completely refurbished as a top end hotel/private club with 18 flats for sale plus penthouse suites, two dining rooms, lounges, a library and reading room, coffee lounge with one restaurant open to the public, a heritage room about the house’s history, and possibly a pool and gym facilities. All residents will have the use of an underground car park.

Gardens to the rear would be restored and the entire front landscaped.

Later additions to the Castle Mona itself would be demolished to provide a dramatic extension in the same style, containing 21 further flats. There is also the potential in future, if a deal can be reached with a separate landowner, to build 12 detached houses all with sea views on the land above the site.

Total cost of the Castle Mona’s main building and two wings would be £20m excluding land costs. Its new name would be No.1 Castle Mona Place. Being a listed building special care has to be taken to ensure 200-year-old features are maintained.

The various flat types would be marketed for between £975,000 for the penthouse, the 14 two-bed flats for £695,000 and the four one-bed flats for £499,000.

Mr Rice: ’Most of the building is Arran white freestone so the look of the entire building will be transformed. The best historic renovation contractors and architects are being used to ensure the whole site is of a superior nature.’

But this is just one part of the proposal.

The Wild Coast Group, which has investors in Singapore, South Africa and Luxembourg, specialises in retirement property, particularly in the UK.

Its proposal is to buy and demolish the Palace Hotel for a new development containing 72 to 96 retirement one-, two- and three-bed flats based around a similar quadrangle design to that of the Castle Mona extension but quite radical in style.

Mr Rice said: ’There will be quite a lot of use of glass. It’s certainly going to be its own building and the internals will be the best there is in their field.’

Total cost of that development will be a further £25m, again excluding land costs. Sale prices for the retirement flats have yet to be determined.

But the key to unlocking the whole scheme will be the Middlemarch site on the corner of Lord Street and Walpole Avenue, which the government bought from the Sefton Group for £3.2m and leased back to it in 2013. An empty police station is on the site.

Here the Wild Coast Group has suggested, with separate investors, to build a casino, multiplex cinema and 4-5* 100-bedroom hotel and give first refusal to the Sefton Group on the development. Estimated price would be £25m.

ambition

It’s long been the Sefton Group’s ambition to build a new Palace hotel and casino on the Middlemarch site and the whole package of proposed developments would move that closer.

If a deal is struck, and planning approvals secured, Mr Rice says construction could begin on the Middlemarch site as early as July next year, with preparatory surveys and stripping out of the Castle Mona starting at the same time.

Some 260 days are estimated to get the former Castle Mona hotel ready for refurbishment work. Only when Middlemarch is developed and finished, could demolition of the current Palace hotel get under way. The whole scheme, which effectively started in June last year, could be completed by 2021.

Mr Rice, who now lives in Douglas, said: ’We are not asking the government for any money for this. Obviously there would be grant schemes that would apply to the various elements. We will use local people wherever possible but some of the peel-back and redevelopment work will need specialist help from the UK.’