THE SITE of Marvel’s amusement park, above North Bay in Scarborough, suggests the aftermath of a terrible disaster. Broken carriages lie upturned on the rubble-strewn ground, and the “mountain” where “dinosaurs” once roamed is a heap of broken old concrete. The lighting tower for the derelict amphitheatre, disguised as an Italianate villa, looks as if it has been shelled.

But here, in the next five years if all goes according to schedule, will sit a brand-new hotel, with lodges, conference space and a spa that would have given Scarborough’s 18th-century imbibers a fit of the vapours. This will be the centrepiece of The Sands, a vast holiday park aimed unashamedly at middle-class visitors, whom the developers hope to attract with sophisticated restaurants, a casino and a luxury health and fitness centre .

“It’s very, very difficult to stop thinking about it,” admits David Rhodes, managing director of Benchmark Leisure, the project’s developer. “I can’t go on holiday without thinking: ‘We must have that at Scarborough.’ When I was in Australia recently there was a development at Port Douglas, near Cairns, that had a lot of very high-quality villas built around a golf course. The quality of the landscaping and the management of the common areas was immaculate.”

These are the kind of ambitious standards that Rhodes wants to bring to the East Coast, but big spenders will not come to resorts such as Scarborough until they raise their game. This means stylish accommodation, decent food at all hours and lots of activities to keep children of all ages happy. The Sands’ basic visitor catchment takes in Leeds, York, Newcastle and Manchester, but it is hoped that it will draw visitors from across Britain and even from the Netherlands and Germany. To do this, The Sands is going to have to be pretty spectacular.

Just down the hill from the hotel two holiday villages are proposed. And at the gateway to the £110 million development, next to a covered water park (with flumes, lazy rivers and climbing waterfalls), there will be 100 seafront apartments available to buy outright, starting at £100,000 for an 850 sq ft one-bedder. “You’ll get more space than in, say, a flat in central Leeds,” says Rhodes. “People on holiday like a bit of space to spread out. Across the development the spec will be high quality, obviously, but the finishes have got to be robust, because you’ll have holidaymakers in all year round.”

Most of the existing wooden beach huts, with their Baby Belling rings for warming soup on rainy August days, will be upgraded and remain available for hire. But the Corner Café, with its North Sea views and cabaret nights, is to be demolished to make way for the seafront apartments, and will become just another seaside memory preserved only in dog-eared holiday snaps.

The Sands will be built on 55 acres at the North Bay, traditionally the “quiet” end of Scarborough. The thinking behind the scheme is certainly futuristic. Imagine, if you will, a huge Center Parcs-style development by the sea, open to day visitors and with accommodation that you can actually own. As well as the units for outright ownership, a further 320 apartments, cottages and cabins are proposed in the holiday village. Gerry Stapleton, a consultant to the development, explains that for an investment of £100,000 for a one-bed property, buyers will purchase six weeks’ guaranteed residence for themselves, with the option to extend this to a likely maximum of three months. It is planned that owners will let the property for the rest of the year. “This will probably mean two weeks in high season, four weeks in low season,” he says. “You will receive a minimum return on your investment, certainly for the first two years as the scheme takes off. After that you will share in the income from the letting of the units. So, you’re getting an investment, a holiday, a return and capital growth on the building.”

That is the plan, at least. It must be said that the history of Scarborough’s North Bay redevelopment is littered with broken dreams. “It goes back five or six years,” explains Graham Price, head of property services for Scarborough Borough Council. “Malcolm Stephenson, the director of Marvel’s, was aware that attendances were dropping. He made some relatively low-key investments to try and retain his business. But it wasn’t working; it needed a completely new thought. He came to us with the germ of an idea, a vision to move forward, which became the sort of thing that we’re looking at now.”

Benchmark Leisure was appointed two years ago, and gained outline planning consent in October 2004. Detailed planning applications for each building phase are about to be submitted to the council under “reserved matters”, which means that they have already been approved in principle on the masterplan. Work is expected to start at the end of this summer season, with an optimistic date of late 2006 for the first phase of finished apartments. Now, where did I put that lottery ticket?

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