FLAMBOYANT gypsy multi-millionaire Alfie best is hoping to come up trumps with an ambitions plan for a skyscraper hotel in Thurrock.

Mr Best, whose Wyldecrest mobile homes empire is run from an office block in West Thurrock in the shadow of the QEII bridge, want to demolish it and build an 'iconic' structure that he has dubbed the 'Burj Al Gypsy'.    

He says the £50 million Wyldecrest Park Tower will contain "co-living" and "co-working" spaces along with hotel services, a business centre, VIP lounges and private offices and include a spa, restaurants and a bar and lounge area - within the price range of people who live and work nearby.

Entrepreneur and avowed self-publicist Mr Best, a Romany gypsy best known for his regular forays into tabloid newspapers and reality TV, including Ch4's My Big Fat Gypsy Fortune, says he wants to develop his showcase enterprise in Thurrock because 'it has been such a welcoming borough to us as a company. It will be an iconic building to really make a statement point for the borough."

The Burj Al Gypsy.

Mr Best, widely reported to be close to becoming a billionaire, said that the building would feature a "budget hotel", estimating a price of around £89 - £120 a night to stay in.

But he added that, while his first choice is to build an affordable site for people in Britain, if those plans are scuppered then the project will have to become something for the super-rich in the Middle East.

Speaking to the Sun newspaper on a visit to Qatar, he questioned whether Thurrock and the UK is ready for his ambitious project, saying: "I'll 100% take the project elsewhere if not given planning permission.

advertisement

"That's exactly what I'm doing here (in Qatar) - looking for other spaces if we're refused in the UK.

"It pains me not to be investing in the UK - I'd rather be investing in the UK.

"It's not being built in Mayfair, Knightsbridge or central London, it's being built in a working town on the outskirts, on the corridor of the centre of London.

"That, hopefully, is what we want to put in - a budget hotel. Will there be a five-star restaurant? Absolutely - but there will be no five-star hotel."

High-flying Alfie Best had ambitious hopes for East Thurrock United but they came to ultimate disappointment.

Mr Best's Wyldecrest business has now ballooned to an empire of more than 100 mobile home sites from Scotland to Cornwall with 16,000 residents and a staff of 400.

As well as locating his business HQ in West Thurrock, he was also involved in what ulitmately proved to be an unsuccessful buy-out of the now defunct East Thurrock United non-League football club, though part of the legacy of that development is the Wyldecrest Sports and Country Club (formerly the Peg Club) on Herd lane in Corringham.