Residents of Ramsey are being asked for their views on a £40m proposal for a ’key gateway’ site on the edge of the town centre.

The Sulby Riverside development, which is being proposed by a limited company of the same name, would be at the western entrance to the town and provide workspaces, homes, three public parks, a riverside gastro-pub with function rooms and ’new retail opportunities’.

Sulby Riverside Ltd said that it had spent ’considerable time refining the proposal’ in collaboration with local planners, and now an online public consultation is being launched before a planning application is submitted.

The site is bounded by Gardeners’ Lane to the west, Poyll Dooey Road to the south, the town centre to the east and the River Sulby to the north.

Laxey resident Nathan Church, who is part of a consortium of investors behind the proposals, described it as ’a unique opportunity to boost Ramsey’s appeal as a place to live, work and visit’.

He explained: ’The homes are a mix of townhouses, apartments and larger semi- and detached houses. They’re designed for local people’s needs, evidenced by the significant investment proposed into community facilities such as the park, play equipment and a multi-sports pitch.’

Mr Church says the development will help Ramsey fulfil its housing and economic growth needs without encroaching on the local green belt. He added: ’One of the things that drew us to the location was the fact that it knits together the town centre with the emerging communities beyond Gardeners Lane to the west.

’Our consultants have been able to show that the existing local infrastructure and road network will comfortably cope with the additional demands with the added benefit that the new primary access road will take pressure off Gardeners Lane during the TT.’

People can also use the consultation website - www.sulbyriverside.im - to register for and attend an online ’questions and answers’ session with the project design team, which will be held at 6.30pm on Monday, December 6.

Sulby Development Ltd went on to stress that the proposals would help to sustain employment in the local building supply chain and ’generate hundreds of thousands of pounds per year in new rateable income available to invest in public services’.

The company added: ’Local retailers and tradesmen will benefit from the additional spending that new developments typically generate as new home-owners ’make their house a home’. Research suggests this averages approximately £5,000 per household.’

Site master planner Richard Coutts said that it would be ’opening a site that was unavailable to the public for many years’, and that ’a small parade of shops, likely to consist of a newsagent, café, creche and hairdressers will greet visitors as they arrive from the Poyll Dooey Road’.

He added that the development had been ’sensitively laid out’.