Campbeltown - What would you do?

[Friend of Dorothy]

Mmm, have to cut down on the substance abuse!!!!!

[general jack o'niell]

i'd build my dream house with a cinema which would probably be used for playing xbox and ps3 tiger woods and madden on, a bowling alley, indoor pool and a recording studio.

i'd also buy a luxury cruiser with 8-10 berths and get bill's brother on a retainer to keep an eye on the electrics, and hamish as engineer, i'd be captain of course!! it would cruise the clyde and the western isles in the summer and spend the winter in the med, based mainly near my villa in portimao.

i'd buy out machrihanish dunes, it'll probably look am,azing when its finished but i've always envisaged my own cours on that bit of shore, i have all the holes planned, have had them for years, respectable locals would be able to play on it for free, tho they'd need to let me play thru, visitors would be charged £20 for a round, £30 for a day and a week for £80, pretty reasonable, it would have a fleet of buggies, free of charge(except electricity of course, you have to charge them) and a welcoming clubhouse serving reasonably priced meals from my own menu, anyone driving would not be served alcohol, so there would be no sunday league!!!

what would this do for the town? well i'd let everyone look at all my stuff for free, you won't get to touch it, but you can look all you want, with any spare millions i would start a company that would employ at least 150 locals, in an industry that would benefit the local economy, not just take a grant and bugger off when the honeymoon was over and it would be strictly locals, no free market EU right to work nonsense, local jobs for locals, longterm with apprentices, young folk able to learn a trade when they leave school, with classes teaching the trades that are always needed, brickie, joiner, plumber, electrician, etc

oh and i'd smoke more, money no object so i'd be on at least 60 a day, brilliant!!!

[Machrihanish]

I would buy a substantial amount of shares in the development company building Machrihanish Dunes and offer CalMac a subsidy to provide a Campbeltown to Ayr Ferry, stopping at Arran of course. Then I would hope that the entrepreneurial spirit might catch on with the locals....some of the things already mentioned etc

[Buzz Lightyear]

"If you had millions of pounds and you had your lot (car, big house, holidays, private planes, three wives etc etc) and you had the opportunity to make a difference to Campbeltown in terms of investing money in a project close to your heart or simply for the good of the town - what would it be?"

What would make a differance.......what would i change, apart from what we go on about here, hotels, golf course, etc....i would change absolutely nothing, if we did it would never be the same wee toon we have got.

[Annie]

Aye, yer right there!

[linda_j]

I cannot believe that some budding entrepreneur has not already done this......buy Keil Hotel (you will get it for nothing) spend your million quid on renovating it and then sell golfing holidays to the mega rich yankees. The view from Keil is one of the best in the world and Dunaverty is an undescovered gem of a course which rivals Machrihanish in terms of landscape any day......plus both courses are playable all year round.

Of course it goes without saying that you will have to ban the locals from drinking in the bar !!!!

Thats exactly what I would do... we had many a nice meal sitting looking out Keil Hotel across the water In fact I think some american company will snap this up and make good use of selling timeshares to go along with the new golf course at Machrihanish......

[general jack o'niell]

only one snag with that, terry still owns the access road to the hotel and the bit with the old tennis court and the hillside that the hotel backs into, oh and the outbuildings and carpark, he only sold the hotel building itself, if you believe terry that is?

[linda_j]

And he couldn't be bought

[linda_j]

I think somewhere along the way we got a bit off topic with this one .....

[general jack o'niell]

don't think so, someone mentioned a refurb of the keil, i just pointed out a little known fact concerning the ownership of access to it which has scuppered at least one attempt to re-open the hotel, to my knowledge

[ionnsaigh]

Just goes to show private ownership, can at times be in conflict ,with the best interest of the community.

[Bobbie En Tejas]

I took my grandson to the playground downtown yesterday. It is one of those wooden ones that the little ones seem to love. They are of different sizes, made of wood, have a number of slides of different sizes and configurations, "forts" and climbing areas, things they can hang on, swings. Some incorporate "ships" and "castles". They can be quite large.

My favorite one is in Corpus Christi with a beautiful view of the water, with benches and picnic tables. Great for the kids, great place for parents to meet up, great place to take a book and enjoy the day. You've got the perfect locale for a park like that.

I'm not sure something like this would make a difference to Campbeltown finances, but it sure would make a difference to the little ones. I've seen a couple of places where they have made these indoors.