The queen of a castle in Cape Breton has turned to Kickstarter in an effort to get her property open to the public quicker.
Elaine Knight famously purchased 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 centre.
She has been seeking outside investment help but has not been able to find others with a like-minded vision for the property.
“I want it to be open to the community for community events,” she noted, explaining that investors thus far wished for it to remain more of a private offering.
“So somebody has suggested Kickstarter because it’s entrepreneurs helping other entrepreneurs.”
Knight noted that there has been plenty of interest from a wide variety of people who are looking to rent or stay at the castle.
“We had such a high number of requests for everything from meetings, conferences, stays, weddings, LARPing murder mysteries,” she explained, noting that they have also heard from people wanting to shoot a music video on the site.
She paid $1 million for the castle and is seeking another $750,000 from others to get it launched.
While it is a healthy chunk of change, she stressed that it is not a typical crowdsourcing campaign seeking donations, as those who pledge funding will be pre-booking packages for when the property is open.
“The packages that I put on there are really discounted prices and they’re good up until 2027,” she said.
Knight says that she has 30 days to meet the $750,000 fundraising goal before it expires, noting that if they do not reach the number, no one will be charged at all and she will have to either restart or begin looking at other options including finding a new partner.
Some of the $750,000 will go to Kickstarter and other portions would go to pay for taxes for sales.
The castle, which sits on a massive 163 acre-property and has private access to Bras d’Or Lake, was initially built in 1992.
Formerly known as Castle Moffet, Knight became the third owner of the property last December and will rename it Castle Knight, which makes sense given the historical charm of her surname.
She currently lives in London, Ont., where she operates a homecare company but has been looking to move down to Cape Breton for retirement for several years now as she has family roots there.
Her niece sent her the link to the property and she dove on board.
“When I opened it up, I just said ‘mine!’” Knight said.
She bought the property as is, with all of the antique furniture and other accoutrements included.
“So we’ll just be decorating a little bit differently. But we’re going to keep the charm of the castle and so going try to make it a little bit more castle-y on the inside as well,” she explained.
For the most part, she has no major changes planned but there will be updates to plumbing and electrical while the outside walls of the castle also needed to be refurbished.
“So what we’re doing is we’ve replaced all the walls on the whole outside and we’ve just got one more area to do,” Knight said.
She said that is phase one of the renos down with two more phases to go, as windows will replaced and the interior is set to be rejigged to include a games room.