8 years on

Almost exactly eight years ago I blipped the old St Catherine's Hotel , which sits in an attractive loch-side spot beside the main road from Dunoon to  mid Argyll, drawing attention to its ruinous state and to the fact that it had been like that for far too long.

I concluded that blip by asking " surely the developer or the Council can do something before the inevitable happens and it is declared unsafe and bulldozed?"


Well I was wrong on two counts.  8 years on it hasn't yet been declared unsafe and bulldozed , but I suspect that is only because some basic work has been done from time to time to both tidy up the eyesore of a site and stabilise the structure including some cosmetic application of paint to boarded up windows.  


But I was also wrong about my expectations.   The owner has done the absolute minimum possible even though part of the structure is a listed building.   The Council has, no doubt,  pressed him to ensure the site isn't quite as bad as it was but has done no more even though, by my reckoning, 11 councillors drive past this spot regularly plus lots more council officials.


The same person owns the Pier at Inveraray directly across Loch Fyne which is also in a terrible  state though there the community are making moves to try and buy it.   


The community at St Catherines is, I think, too small  to take on responsibility for the hotel so it really does fall to the Council to either come to an agreement with the owner about development and set a binding timescale for it or secure a compulsory purchase order and try to get someone else  to buy it with realisable plans which would mean that it did not blight the area for another decade.