Brief Leas Pavilion update

Over the last few days, we caught up with Olivier Daelemans, the owner and developer behind Leas Pavilion – Folkestone, to ask how the project is meant to move forward.

When we met him, Mr Daelemans cut a confident figure: blue suit, crisp white cotton shirt, polished brown shoes and a deep bronze tan. He said he was waiting for a KCC planning officer to sign off a retaining wall running beneath the pavement at the front of the building. Once that hurdle is cleared, he said, the project can finally begin in earnest.

His plan, he explained, is for the new building to straddle the Leas Club. The site will be piled, a steel frame erected on the foundations, and large concrete slabs laid across it to form the floors.

He was keen to stress that the flats had been marketed through a range of well-known online estate agents. So far, he said quietly but confidently, 20 apartments had been sold, with others waiting in the wings.

“We’ve sold 20 apartments, and there are more people in the queue to sign up. I really want to get, how do you say it, ‘cracking on’.”

And people are prepared to pay up to £925,000?

“Oh yes,” he replied with a nod. “But the cheapest apartments are £285,000.”

He was also keen to make clear that the scheme would be built out in phases, although he did not go into detail about what that would mean in practice for traffic, construction disruption or the neighbours. Buyers, he said, would purchase leasehold flats once the development is complete.

Mr Daelemans also made the case that previous developers, including Churchgate and Quinn Estates, had looked at the Leas Club as a gym, tea room or bar, and that this was one reason they had struggled to make a viable scheme stack up. His own approach, he said, was different.

“I have faced similar issues in Belgium, where I have developed sites similar to this. The easiest and simplest way to make a project of this type viable is to use what exists for the residents and the community.”

Rather than trying to squeeze profit from the Leas Club itself, he said he chose to engage with the Friends of the Leas Pavilion. After listening to their concerns, he said, he decided to build many of their aims and requirements into the future legal structure of the development, describing it as a “win-win solution” for all involved.

Of course, developers can please some people all of the time, and all people some of the time, but not all people all of the time.

We were about to continue when the KCC planning officer arrived, cutting the conversation shorter than expected. After a few brief introductions, Mr Daelemans and his enviable tan disappeared with the officer into the bowels of the building, talking over the finer points of reinforced walls.

The Shepway Vox Team

Journalism for the People NOT the Powerful