The closure of the Caiseal Mara (McNamara’s), as well as the closure of the Foyle, has been a big blow to Moville. Moville is a holiday town and in a few years has gone from having 2 hotels with 64 bedrooms to none and none. It makes it a lot harder to make the festivals a success when there are no hotels for visitors to stay in.
Hopefully that will be rectified this week. The Caiseal Mara will be up for auction in Dublin on Tuesday. It will have a reserve price of no more than €175,000. That’s practically giving it away. A decent house would cost you that. The Caiseal Mara has 48 rooms and two function rooms – one which has 300 seats.
Spectators
It has been on sale at €300,000 for more than a year now with no takers. I’m told that there has been quite a few people who went to see it last Monday when there was a viewing. However, one doesn’t know if it was the curious or potential buyers.
The final viewing will take place on Monday the 14th between 1pm and 2pm. There is no need to make an appointment.
One hopes that it will be bought by someone who knows the hotel and travel business and who will make a success of it. Someone could get a real bargain here.
Worth Millions
The big chandelier in the reception cost 50 grand on its own I’m told. In say 10 years time a successful Caiseal Mara could be worth millions. After all they were asking €1.8m for it even after they went into administration.
However, it looks like the bank wants to get rid of it at any rice they can now. It seems the banks own a third of all hotel beds in Ireland now and after hoping to get commercial prices for them they now just want out at any price they can get. Anyone with money now in Ireland could make a killing.
Tuesday should be interesting. Let’s hope there is a buyer. If it doesn’t even hit its reserve price it could be lying shut for years.