£5.2 million regeneration of Park Square launched

[Kintyre Forum News]

ACHA, the Scottish Government and Argyll And Bute Council Launch the next phase of Campbeltown’s regeneration

Last Friday, the 8th July 2011, Michael Russell MSP for Argyll and Bute and Councillor Dick Walsh, the Leader of Argyll and Bute Council, launched a £5.2million regeneration project at Park Square in Campbeltown. (Continued below)


Current site

The development, which is being coordinated by Argyll Community Housing Association, will provide 32 affordable homes, a new streetscape and an access road to the Harbour. Funding for the project has come from the Scottish Government, ACHA, Argyll and Bute Council and Scottish Water. The project is a continuation of ACHA’s housing led regeneration strategy which builds on the successful housing and allotment development completed last year in neighbouring New Parliament Place.

This current development has also involved a partnership with Argyll and Bute Council’s CHORD programme for Campbeltown.

The site launch was inaugurated by speeches from Michael Russell MSP and Councillor Walsh, which was followed by a first turf cut with a digger.

Commenting at the launch, Alastair MacGregor, ACHA’s Chief Executive, said “I am delighted that this four-way partnership will invest in new homes, jobs and wider regeneration, which will assist Campbeltown’s economy in the long term. In these difficult financial times I would like to thank everyone who has worked so hard to bring all of this together.”

Michael Russell MSP commented“The demand for new housing remains high in all parts of Argyll & Bute and it is hard to satisfy that demand given the very difficult current situation for public expenditure. The work that ACHA is doing with the Scottish Government to put together viable and high quality new housing developments is to be commended and I am very honoured to be in the ground level, so to speak, as work starts here in Campbeltown on such a scheme."

Argyll and Bute Council Leader Dick Walsh said, "This is a wonderful development. These 32 new houses along with the 54 completed last year provides affordable housing to encourage young families to stay in the area as well as an incentive for people to move to Campbeltown. The council is investing heavily in Argyll and Bute through our CHORD project and I am delighted that we have been a part of this ACHA development which continues Campbeltown's regeneration.”

The construction project has been awarded to Lochgilphead based company M & K MacLeod and will take 18 months to complete.

As part of the proposals to develop housing at Park Square, McCallum Street will be closed over the coming weeks. This will see access to the road restricted with only footway access to properties allowed. This will allow ACHA to take over the site and begin construction work on their development.

Following completion of the work by ACHA, a new road, formed during the construction will provide full access to existing properties served by McCallum Street and to the new housing development.’



Mike Russell and Dick Walsh

[witchnettle]

does anyone know what the new site is to be called?

[zeus]

£5.2 million for 32 houses seems like a awful lot of money...

[jdcarra]

£5.2 million for 32 houses seems like a awful lot of money...

Better if they would spend some of that money giving the older houses we live in a facelift.I live in an ex forestry wooden house and last time it had a lick of paint was over six years ago and round about that again.
Battered by all types of weather yearly, it has rotten woodwork,bare and worn weather boards and lacks proper insulation in the walls.Some of the metal pan tiles on the roof are showing rusty signs and the gutters are not level and leaking despite having a clean and inspection twice.Having reported all this on many occasions over the last couple of years i had a chap from Acha up recently to survey all.
I'm awaiting the outcome of this to get my home looking a bit respectable and to do some thing about some more insulation.Our rent for this property, now well past its sell by date (50 years) is £65.56 a week which i think is a bit steep considering the rent for a brand new house.
Our garden sheds get better treatment yearly and thats basically what we live in.

[zeus]

£5.2 million will be spent then the same dross that made park square the dump that it was will be demanding the new houses , money well spent

[gizmo]

I worked in Park Square and indeed in Parliament Place, although I wouldnt want some of the folk that lived there as my neighbours, I would still think calling people dross unneccesary. Maybe a better class of people on Olympus.

[the special one]

find it absolutley ridiculous that millions of pounds is getting spent on building new houses to accomodate the type of people that will be attending the new clinic that is on the cards for campbeltown.
ive stayed in my house in carradale for 10 years and not once has it been painted, i offered to paint it myself and was told that wasnt allowd... been in constant contact with the council ie letters phone calls and just getting passed from pillar to post. one person who came to survey the house told me that coal fire and storage heaters was illegal to have in a house together i was then told that this was nonsence by ACHA... it appears that ACHA want hard working citizens like myself living in a hovle and the afore mentioned people living like royalty. DISGRACE!!!!!!

[WC1]

I don't want to contribute to an emotive and in many ways offensive discussion about the "type of people" who will live in the new houses at Park Square, apart from observing that an awful lot of conclusions are being jumped to. However, does anyone know how much of the £5.2 million is actually going to be spent on the housing project and how much of it on the new road?

[the special one]

"type of people".....well wc1,what type of people do you think go to these clinics that i referred to? because in my eyes if you aren't classed as such people then ACHA take nothing to do with you... they just want their statistics to look good at the end of the day.

[Ship called Dignity]

However, does anyone know how much of the £5.2 million is actually going to be spent on the housing project and how much of it on the new road?

"Allegedly" the whole £5.2million is just for the housing alone. Each house has a unit price of approx. £140,000 (yes amazing!) with the remainder made up of fees. I couldn't believe it myself when I heard it but apparently the road is separate.

What bugs me is we have the situation where the Council raided the CHORD funds for the marina to pay for the All Weather Pitch which, to a degree, has undermined the AWP campaign and reduced the funding for the Marina when the campaign group continually suggested that the AWP should (or could) be funded by the CHORD funding for the Kinloch Road regeneration. It should, of course, been a capital funded project but that is another story!!! You then hear that £800,000 of the CHORD money for the Kinloch Road regeneration went to this development (32 houses) to apparently give the houses a better high end finish that the £400,000 the CHORD project could have allocated instead! Now straight away we have £400,000 that could have been saved and went to something the community really wants and needs. Not on bloody fancy finishings!

I've been meaning to post concerns about where money is going for some time and especially since we now have the situation where we have people putting the Marina up against the AWP. The CHORD project for Campbeltown received a capital allocation of £6.5m in November 2008. £1.16 million of that was allocated to the development of Campbeltown marina (which was then reduced to £680,000 following money be moved to support the AWP). The regeneration programme of the town centre, Campbeltown THI, got £300,000 with just under £5million pound being allocated to the Kinloch Road Regeneration. Of that £1,000,000 went to Campbeltown Infrastructure Improvements to build a new road through Park Square leaving £3,995,000 for the Kinloch Road Regeneration. As mentioned above of that £800,000 was allocated to the housing development with little (or no) detail of where the remaining £3,000,000 is being spent (one assumes the removal of the Council yard etc but there is no break down).

So money being thrown about while vital community projects are left to go against each other and undermine one another. I honestly can't believe there hasn't been more on this and people asking some serious questions. The CHORD project has a really chance to create a legacy for Campbeltown and while it will be great to see the Kinloch redevelopment we should be getting a marina, an AWP and an Arts and Cultural Theatre for this kind of money.

[WC1]

Thanks for that, SCD. The original post which started this thread did seem to suggest that the whole project - including the road realignment etc - came in at £5.2m. Having said that, £140K per unit for the housing may not be excessive when you consider the cost of the average kit house + site and services. What appalls me about this thread is the way that a query about the cost of the 32 houses has suddenly given rise to hysterical speculation that the new development is going to be inhabited entirely by drug addicts attending a clinic that doesn't even exist yet and may not ever open. A bit of an insult to the many ACHA tenants who aren't on Methadone and to the many good and respectable people who lived in Park Square when it was Park Square.

[gizmo]

I would have thought £140,000 would have been a bit steep for a top-notch kit house on its own in the middle of no-where.
For a single unit in a scheme of 32 where the ground is already paid for, where the services are running down the Longrow and with the savings that should be there for multiple builds somebody somewhere needs to explain where this money is going. If £5.2M covered the whole project including road maybe it wouldnt sound quite so bad.

[Ship called Dignity]

Thanks for that, SCD. The original post which started this thread did seem to suggest that the whole project - including the road realignment etc - came in at £5.2m. Having said that, £140K per unit for the housing may not be excessive when you consider the cost of the average kit house + site and services.

Still excessive for what they are - 32 mixture of flats and maisonettes. I'm quite sure you could develop a site with 32 individual bungalows for £140,000 each. By the way, this is what I heard, but came from a good source.

[booboos]

As a former tenant of Park Square for over 30 years, I am appauled at being called dross. My best childhood memories were from growing up in Park Square. Towards the end there may have been a few "undesirables" and the fact that the houses were tired led to some residents not caring about the place.
I have been a watcher of this forum for some time now and have never actually posted until now - I`ve only posted now because I`m actually disgusted with some of the members comments.
I know it`s an anonymous forum and that seems to bring out the keyboard warriors!
GET IT UP YE

[Isa]

Booboos Not sure what dross is but I assume it's folk who don't work, are on benefits take drink and drugs and don't look after their environment. If that is the definition then the same can be said for other communities in Kintyre. You will find "dross" from Southend to Carradale. Folk who scam the system do gardening cut grass but never declare what they are earning in case their benefits are cut. They are the real Pariahs of our society. Certainly not exclusive to what was Park Square

Like other members on here I had relatives in Park Square who worked, paid their taxes and full rent It is the only place where a collection was taken when there was a death in the square and the proceeds given to the bereaved.

Plenty of "dross" can be found in both the main schemes in Meadows and Davaar. Some of whom I certainly wouldn't want as neighbours and they have never lived in the square.