St Leonards developer saddled with 'albatross of a development site'

Luke Machan, director of Eversfield Regen Ltd, bought the former Eversfield Chest Hospital and Gambier House sites in West Hill Road, St Leonards, 10 years ago with a view of completely renovating them.

But both premises have been blighted by vandalism and flooding, together with the Covid pandemic stopping any development progress.

Luke met with borough councillors Maya Evans, Andy Batsford and Trevor Webb to discuss the site.

He said: “Gambier House is a lovely building and ideally that is what we want to save. The original chest hospital is in such bad condition.

"There have been so many thefts while the buildings have been unoccupied. All of the lead was taken.

"The issues with the eroding cliff have gotten worse and worse as well, even though the building housing the chest hospital has been there for 130 years.

Cllr Batsford said: “When Luke bought the sites the plan was to renovate both of them but it quickly became clear that the old hospital was in a very poor state indeed, even to the point where the reinforcement beams, which were taken from the old railway when it was first built, have all completely crumbled inside. In other words, the whole building needs to come down.

"Covid then hit so the whole investment portfolios across all the companies stopped. He is now stuck with these two buildings.”

Cllr Evans, the borough council’s deputy leader and housing and community development portfolio holder, said: “This particular developer bought the sites 10 years ago and quickly realised he had saddled himself with an albatross of a development site.

"Dogged with bad luck from flooding to vandalism, the two huge buildings have sat empty on prime real estate for a decade.

“Gambier House needs to be refurbished, as to demolish would undermine the current foundations, costing an unfeasible amount to start from scratch.

“The old hospital can't be salvaged, however getting finance to demolish and build new is also complicated due to planning permission and the eroding cliff, aggravated further by being a small independent developer.

“We have promised to network Luke with other community entrepreneurs trying to do a similar thing, and have successfully accessed funding for housing and regeneration.”

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