Demolition of a seafront landmark in Douglas can’t come too soon for a neighbouring guesthouse owner.

Long-reach excavators moved in this week to start dismantling the six-storey Imperial Hotel on Castlemona Terrace, Central Promenade.

It will come as relief to Sue Dobinson, owner of the St Helier’s guesthouse next door.

The Imperial has been closed since September 2006 but in recent years, has become increasingly derelict and a target for anti-social behaviour and a refuge for pigeons, feral cats and rats.

Sue said: ’It didn’t affect us in the beginning as it still looked quite good.

’But over the last three years, it’s really deteriorated. The windows started to fall through and there’s problems with pigeons and damp.

’It’s quite an eco-system - the top two floors are full of pigeons, there are feral cats on the middle floors and on the bottom floors there are longtails [rats].

’There was a period when I was forever ringing up the police because children were going up and down the fire escape.

’Then there was the time they caught people taking copper pipes out of the building.’

decaying

Increasingly frustrated at the state of the decaying building next door, Sue said she ’threw a wobbler’ and threatened not to pay her rates.

’They sent a man to check the roof and found it was structurally unsound. They put in an application to demolish the building.’

Sue said she hoped demolition of the Imperial would be completed as soon as possible. ’The sooner the better,’ she said.

’I imagine it will take a couple of weeks.’

She said the next couple of weeks were likely to be disruptive with all the noise and dust, but insisted it will be worth it in the end.

’I will tell my guests to keep their windows closed. I’ve 12 guests in at the moment and I’m fully booked at the weekend for the MGP.’

Work began this week with the removal of roof tiles from the old building.

Burnbrae Limited secured planning permission (18/00074/B) and registered building consent (18/00075/CON) earlier this month to demolish the building and clear the site.

Its planning consent includes two steel supports for the gable end of the St Helier’s guesthouse and levelling the site to the lower ground floor level to allow for future development.

Decorative railings onto Mona Drive will be retained and the site will be landscaped.

No proposals for a replacement building were included in the application.

The hotel falls within the Douglas Promenades Conservation Area Order 2002.

Isle of Man Natural History and Antiquarian Society objected to the application, arguing that proper consideration hadn’t been given to maintaining the facade which is one of only two built from Ruabon brick on the promenades.

A previous application for the building to be demolished was submitted in 2013, although that was later withdrawn despite a structural assessment of the building.

That assessment, carried out in January 2013, concluded that the former hotel was ’in a dangerous condition and should be demolished without delay’.

Since the hotel closed, it had been used to train police sniffer dogs.

The Imperial dates back to 1891 and the building was originally two hotels.

Its heyday was in the 1930s when it was run by the Kiddie family, who had a shopfitting business in Blackpool.

In its final years, the Imperial was run by sisters Mrs Bell and Mrs Birch.