She spent $1 million for a NS castle. Now this Ontario woman needs $750,000 to let the public in

The queen of a Cape Breton castle has turned to Kickstarter in an effort to open her property to the public more quickly.

Elaine Knight bought the 10-bedroom, 18-bathroom fortress along the Trans-Canada Highway in Cape Breton last December with plans to turn it into a bed and breakfast and events center.

She has sought outside investment help but has not been able to find others with a like-minded view on the property.

“I want it to be open to the community for community events,” she noted, explaining that so far investors have wanted it to remain more of a private offering.

“So someone suggested Kickstarter because they are entrepreneurs helping other entrepreneurs.”

Knight noted that there is a lot of interest from a wide variety of people looking to rent or stay at the castle.

“We had such a high volume of requests for everything from meetings, conferences, staycations, weddings and LARP murder mysteries,” she explained, noting that they had also heard from people wanting to record a music video on the site.

She paid $1 million for the castle and it is looking for another $750,000 from others to get it launched.

While it is a healthy chunk of change, she emphasized that it is not a typical crowdsourcing campaign seeking donations, as those pledging funding will pre-order packages for when the property is open.

Receive national news daily

Get the day’s top news, political, economic and current headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day.

“The packages I offer there have very low prices and are valid until 2027,” she said.

Knight says she has 30 days to reach the $750,000 fundraising goal before it expires. If they don’t reach that amount, they won’t be charged at all and will have to start over or look at other options, including finding a new partner.

Part of the $750,000 will go to Kickstarter and another part will go to taxes on sales.

Situated on a huge 163 hectare estate with private access to Bras d’Or Lake, the castle was originally built in 1992.

Knight, formerly known as Castle Moffet, became the property’s third owner last December and will rename it Castle Knight, which makes sense given the historic charm of her surname.

She currently lives in London, Ontario, where she runs a home care business, but has been wanting to move to Cape Breton for her retirement for several years as she has family roots there.

Her niece sent her the link to the property and she jumped on board.

“When I opened it, all I said was ‘mine!’” Knight said.

She bought the property as is, including all the antique furniture and other accessories.

“So we’re just going to decorate it a little differently. But we will keep the charm of the castle and therefore try to make it a bit more expensive on the inside as well,” she explained.

For the most part, she doesn’t have any major changes planned, but there will be updates to plumbing and electrical, while the castle’s exterior walls also needed renovation.

“So what we’re doing is we’ve replaced all the walls on the outside and we have one more area to do,” Knight said.

She said this is the first phase of the renovation, with two more phases to go as the windows will be replaced and the interior updated with a games room.

&copy 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.