Ramsgate’s West Cliff Hall is back on the sale market with a guide price of £325,000 for the building freehold,
It is being auctioned by Savills who say it has ‘positive’ pre-planning application advice to create an 89 bedroom hotel on the 0.75 acre site.
The auction takes place on May 29 and West Cliff Hall is lot 119.
The West Cliff Hall has been empty since 2005 when the Motor Museum left the site. Over the following almost two decades the property has remained empty and continued to deteriorate.
In November last year the company set up by the owner of the West Cliff Hall had compulsory strike off action suspended for a second time.
The first compulsory strike off action was discontinued in January 2023 for the company which has been dormant since it was created in 2019.
A second strike off action was lodged in September last year and suspended in November. Accounts for the company are listed as overdue and should have been lodged by July 2023.
The company, Westcliff Development Ltd, is headed up by Dr Davinder Singh Jamus and Mohinder Singh Rajan, who bought West Cliff Hall for £225,000 in 2018 after Thanet council put it to auction.
No planning applications for the site had been submitted to Thanet council until the pre-application noted on Savill’s website.
It opened in 1914 as a theatre, concert hall and promenade venue, adjacent to the Royal Paragon Baths.
It had been an Italian Garden with bandstand until the cliff was dug out to make space for the new hall. The first 40 metres of the existing promenade along Ramsgate’s West Cliff, are formed by the roof of the concert hall which previously hosted acts including the Rolling Stones in 1964.
Plans to rebuild and recreate the site were put in motion by youth charity Project MotorHouse in 2009.
The charity, which was headed by Ramsgate resident Janet Fielding before a decision to shut it down in 2022, wanted to create cinemas; theatres; bars; restaurants, offices and youth facilities.
The site had been on the council’s disposal list from 2005 to 2010 without any other interest being expressed.
In 2014 Thanet council and Project MotorHouse jointly commissioned a surveyor’s report which found that not only was the steel frame of the building severely corroded and needed replacing, but the outer walls were resting on wet masonry with no other support.
A structural survey, which was carried out by Holt and Wotton Ltd, said the toilet block of the hall “in part supports the adopted highway,” adding “some propping has been provided within the building.
“The propping in the two-storey section is due to serious deterioration of precast concrete roof beams and the section of the promenade over this area of the building has been fenced off to prevent public access.
“The propping in the stairwell is due to the heavily corroded condition of the steel beams within the stairwell.”
The report outlined corrosion and cracks throughout the hall and added: “There are many issues with this building.
“In simple terms the exposed steel work in the stairwell between the building and the toilet block and at the rear of the stairwell at low level are all severely corroded such that they would need replacement.”
The survey said the asphalt roof had reached the end of its life. In looking at options for the future of the building the report said retaining it would mean ‘significant repair,’ and a new build would be “easier to achieve long term solutions.”
A third option, to infill the site, was deemed too expensive. A suggestion was to demolish the main building and construct an embankment.
MotorHouse raised more than £300,000 which paid for lawyers, asbestos removal and propping, fixing the garden walls, vat specialists, surveys, a construction industry project manager and designs by architect Guy Hollaway.
But in 2017 Thanet council approved the sale of the West Cliff Hall, and the Western Undercliffe café and toilets, on the open market.
It was bought at auction the following year for £225,000. Since then no work has taken place at the site.
At the time of the sale concerns were raised over possible landbanking.
Ward councillor Becky Wing said: “Sadly the Westcliff Hall was sold at the same auction as the Western Undercliff Cafe and that is now being offered for sale for a third time at nearly 10 times the original sale price.
“Both sites are difficult but with this one the large space under the promenade is also an integral part of supporting the road, which incidentally, is in a really bad state. It is also in a conservation area and so any plans coming forward need to consider this.
“As a local resident I share the frustration that community assets are sold, left to blight our communities and then flipped, often at a considerable profit. This is a cycle that with hindsight we must stop.
“It is also interesting that the plans mentioned have not been submitted to Thanet District Council’s planning department for formal consideration, I know that fellow ward councillors Raushan Ara, Tricia Austin and myself, along with many residents would have liked to have seen what is actually proposed.
“Let us hope that if new owners can be found that they do indeed seek planning for something which will enhance the area and progress with a build.”
