August opening for slaley hall
by Dominic Walsh
Slaley Hall, the uncompleted hotel and golf complex in Hexham, Northumberland, will open its doors on 1 August - six years later than originally scheduled.
The new owners, who bought the complex from the receivers last September for about £4m, are investing over £11m to complete the project to five-star standards, while retaining the Edwardian hall's original character.
Estimates of how much was spent on the scheme by the previous developers, John Rourke and Seamus O' Carrol, before they ran out of money in 1991 are sketchy, though local sources suggest a figure of at least £30m.
When completed, Slaley Hall will have 140 bedrooms, three restaurants, a purpose-built leisure club, and 11 conference rooms, the largest holding up to 350 delegates.
The golf course, which has about 350 members, has been operational since before the receivership, and work on a second 18-hole course, designed by leading golfer Neil Coles, is scheduled to start in the next few days.
The 1,000 acres of grounds will also host a variety of country pursuits, including riding, clay pigeon shooting, archery, off-road driving, hot air ballooning and orienteering.
The new owners, trading as Whitegrange Limited, are currently recruiting a management team and about 120 full- and part-time staff.
For new sales director Barbara Huddart it is a case of second-time lucky. She first held the job in 1989 when Sheraton was managing the project.
She worked there until 1991 when the hotel's original owners failed in their endeavours to refinance their debts and Sheraton withdrew.
Ms Huddart, who has been working at Linden Hall Hotel in nearby Longhorsley since then, said the new owners were taking great pains to build up the confidence of both customers and contractors. "We are here to stay and everything will be completed on time," she added.
She was tight-lipped, however, on the identity of the owners.
At the time of the acquisition last September, which was negotiated on their behalf by disgraced ex-Baron Hotels boss Shiraz Kassam, they were described only as "overseas investors".
Records at Companies House filed under the name of Whitegrange Limited show the names of the directors as Paresh Kotecha, a management consultant of Weybridge, Surrey, and Nallan Rangesh, an Indian businessman based in Singapore.
Their operations director, Tony Sachdev, confirmed that Whitegrange also owned the 88-bedroom Hopcrofts Holt Hotel at Steeple Aston, Oxfordshire, and operated the 112-bedroom Heathrow Ambassador Hotel under management contract.
Mr Sachdev said that further expansion in the hotels sector was likely. "The long-term strategy of the company is to have about 10 to 12 hotels, but there's nothing in the pipeline at the moment," he added.
- The Rural Stirling and Upland Tayside areas of Scotland are to receive around £7.5m in grants from the European Commission to aid tourism development.
The money will be targeted at improving tourist attractions and visitor facilities, and to provide training.
