“Voor mij persoonlijk is het Kurhaus een herinnering”
To me personally, the Kurhaus is a memory.
From fancy pavilion and bathhouse in 1818 to international hotel and from Rolling Stones’ venue to official state monument: last week Hans Rouw dedicated his weekly Omroep West column to the grand hotel, dominating the skyline of the Scheveningse boulevard. Melancholically he wonders whether the building will manage to celebrate its second centennial in 2018.
Today, not even three days after Rouw’s column, Omroep West declares the Kurhaus to be bankrupt. A few years ago, the Suisse bank Suisse Credit turned the premises into a huge investment object, valued at 70 million Euros. Over the years, the investments would be paid back by the rent of the hotel and the steady increase of the building’s value. Due to the current crisis, both sources of income didn’t prove to be as lucrative as expected. The hotel isn’t worth more than 24 million and the rent has stopped coming in altogether. According to property journalist Ruud de Wit, this means that the Kurhaus is bankrupt and, most probably, has to be sold against an enormous loss.
Fortunately, another article tells us that both national and international parties can’t wait to be the next owner of our prestigious Kurhaus – which probably means that we can still look forward to a stately second centennial party in a few years – which is, to throw in a nice Dutch phrase to end this sad story, een geluk bij een ongeluk (a blessing in disguise).
(picture: www.highteatips.com)