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Furnishings & DecorFormer hotel up for auction
By Brian Hayward
Port Elizabeth’s historic former Walmer Gardens Hotel, which has been home to Damelin College since the mid-1990s, will be auctioned off next month on instruction of the building’s owner and former Damelin majority shareholder Media 24.
The auction was confirmed on Tuesday by Auction Alliance’s branch manager in the city, Mike Bosch, who said there was already national interest in the sale of the sprawling historical monument which has a floor area of more than 2300m², ahead of its auction at the Protea Marine Hotel on July 22.
Media 24 sold Educor, Damelin’s holding company, to charismatic Durban tycoon Leo Chetty, who is reported to have forked out R2-million to be part of the world’s first commercial space travel aboard Virgin Galactic in 2008.
But despite a board outside the college announcing the auction, many staff were still in the dark about their fate yesterday. “In general Damelin is dreadful with communicating anything to anybody,” said one frustrated lecturer.
Another staff member said despite the sale, they had been told “we will stay at the campus for another two years after the auction”.
But the building will be sold as “vacant occupation”, meaning the new owners will not be obliged to keep the 500 full-time students on at the building.
Another Damelin insider said two prospective new sites were being “looked into”. But Educor national commercial manager Dale Chaplin said they would negotiate with the new owners “and if they want us out, we will have time” to set up a new campus elsewhere.
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