Please send your posters to info@gurnnurn.com - winners will all receive a year's free subscription to the Gurn. Here's our first attempt.
A Gurn from Nurn - News, opinion and pictures from sunny Nairnshire - keep in touch, bookmark the Gurn
A Gurn from Nurn - News, opinion and pictures from sunny Nairnshire - keep in touch, bookmark the Gurn
7 comments:
Can you set up a petition on the Gurn and all the Nairn Facebooks folks can sign?
More important to make individual contributions to the sale consultation just now anon. If Highland Council ignore concerns and try to sell after the consultation they will have to go to the Sheriff Court for permission - that might be the time for petitions.
Here's the consultation address:
Please submit written representations to:-
Email: commongood@highland.gov.uk
Post: Sara Murdoch, Highland Council, Headquarters, Glenurquhart Road, Inverness, IV3 5NX.
"I believe what's happening here is the council trying to to sell off Nairn's family silver."
Caveat: the price of silver rises and falls. There's a time to sell and a time to buy. There are assets to sell and assets to buy.
Sandown is an asset. It is a bit of farmland.
It could be better to sell it and invest the money in the centre for all of Nairn's people - Gurns and Bairns alike.
Do up Viewfield House and create an Art Gallery alongside the Museum?
Do up the old Stables?
Do up and extend the Riverside walks?
Replace the Firhall Bridge?
Extend the footpath network to Arderseir and to Findhorn?
Take over and do up the Ballerina?
Take over and do up the Library?
Take over and do up Rosebank Church?
Develop the Lido concept?
Build a tree-top trail at the Links?
Build all ability walkways onto the beaches?
Take over every empty shop - and provide start-up opportunities for young entrepreneurs?
Sandown is an asset. What is its value now? What is its value likely to be?
Are there any NIMBYs in Nairn?
re Anonymous 12:15pm Do you honestly think Nairn would get even a fraction of the sale value, especially for that long list of ideas. Highland Council will have already spent the money before the ink has dried on the sale contracts.
Anonymous of 12:15 pm is exactly right. Sandown is an asset whose value will rise and fall. But calling it "a bit of farmland" is an injustice. It is also Nairn's green belt. It has value as open space.
It's also true that there are all sorts of ideas, possibilities and opportunities for change and improvement in Nairn. The point about the current sell-off proposal is that none of these other ideas have been put on the table for discussion - and mid-pandemic is not the easiest time in which to have public debate.
The only proposition is that the land be sold to a developer for housing. As Laurie says, it is not for the Common Good to underwrite, or make up for the failure of, the Council to deliver social housing. Nor is it right for Nairn's CG to be expected to pay for public facilities and amenities (Library, public paths, roads and bridges) which - everywhere else in the Highlands and more widely - are provided from the public purse via the local authority, with incentives and funding where appropriate from HIE and other agencies. Equally, it is not for the Common Good to pay for projects (Ballerina refurbishment, Rosebank church, empty shops etc) which are in private ownership, have been neglected, and require private commercial investment.
Precisely because Sandown is such an asset, its future and its fate deserve the widest possible consideration, with all options on the table. If the land is sold, and once the money is spent, what then? If funding is needed to help deliver improvements elsewhere in the town, for example, why not lease (some of) the land to generate an ongoing revenue stream for community purposes (as with the Longman Estate land in Inverness, which generates massive annual cashflow for Inverness CG)? Far better than a once-and-for-all lump sum set by the prevailing market conditions.
This has very little to do with NIMBY-ism. And the chorus about housing need is misplaced (there are plenty of locations where housing can be built if required). The issue is about shrewd long-term strategic planning to maximise community benefit from a unique asset.
Satisfy my curiosity anon and put prices on all these ideas. You can start with the price of all the empty shops and the Ballerina, maybe some of their prices are available online. Happy homework!
Hearing rumours that the stables at Viewfield are up for grabs too?
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