Gerry Barrett's Edward Holdings has sold the Bow Street Magistrates Court in central London to Austrian investors for about €29.5m (£25m), according to reports in Britain.

The listed building in Covent Garden, famous for having Oscar Wilde among its detainees, had been bought by Edward Holdings from the Metropolitan Police Authority and the Royal Courts Service in 2006 for about £17m. Permission was granted two years later for its conversion into an 86-bed luxury hotel. Work was due to begin on the project last year but didn't go ahead.

The new hotel will now be developed by Christian and Rudolf Ploberger, who own a number of other hotels. As Edward Holdings had intended to do, they are expected to preserve some of the building's prison cells, which incarcerated such luminaries as Jeffrey Archer and Augustin Pinochet, as well as Wilde.

Barrett owns the G Hotel and Meyrick Hotel in Galway, as well as the Corrib Great Southern Hotel, on which site he is planning to develop student accommodation.

Barrett also owns Ashford Castle in Mayo. He developed the Scotch Hall shopping centre in Drogheda and owns a number of office buildings in Dublin. The developer also bought sites in Waterford and Cork as the market began to peak.