Frontier Wealth Management wants to redevelop the former Captain Cook Hotel at 57, Hauteville, which has stood empty for a prolonged period and is said to be in an advanced state of disrepair.
The application seeks to change the building’s use from visitor accommodation to residential. The principal building would be converted and extended to create five apartments, while three further homes would be built in the rear garden.
Later flat-roofed extensions at the back of the property would be demolished — something the applicant argues would be a heritage benefit that would help reveal the form of the original building.
The developer is also asking the planning service to remove the protected status of the original building, which was agreed more than 50 years ago.
Its agent, chartered surveyor Gary Naftel of Naftel Associates, said very little of the original structure remained after previous alterations, and that rainwater ingress and timber decay had left it in poor condition. As the site sits within a conservation area, he argued, anything of historical interest could still be safeguarded, making protected status ‘unnecessary’.
The application argued that keeping the site in use as a hotel was ‘neither viable nor deliverable’.
There had been ‘no meaningful interest’ when the property was actively marketed for sale. Mr Naftel said that bringing it up to modern standards would be disproportionately costly.
The plans are now with planning officers at the Development & Planning Authority for consideration.
Previous applications have been made to redevelop the site. Ten years ago permission was granted to erect 11 self-catering units at the rear of the hotel to form an apartment-style hotel, but plans for the work to go ahead were then rejected by Building Control.
The hotel has not operated as such for 10 years and was ordered to stop being used as an alleged lodging house by planners back in 2019.
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