A proposal to build a £100million luxury village on a derelict industrial site at the tip of the Cowal peninsula has received planning approval, the Sunday Herald has learned.
The ambitious plan by London-based construction group Sir Robert McAlpine for Ardyne Point, five miles southwest of Dunoon, will see a large derelict industrial site converted into a 220-berth marina, a ferry terminal, up to 220 flats and houses, 60,000sq ft of office space, a hotel, a retail unit and a waste water treatment plant.
The privately owned company, which has owned the site since it developed it to build oil platforms for the North Sea boom in the 1970s, plans to get work under way as soon as possible, having waited three-and-a-half years to receive permission from Argyll & Bute Council.
“We are delighted to have got the planning consent,” said Andrew Bolt, special projects director at McAlpine. “We are keen to progress the scheme as fast as we can within the constraints of the current economic environment.”
The first phase will involve clearing up the industrial works, including partially filling in the site’s southern basin, reinforcing walls and building roads. This is expected to cost in the region of £45m and will receive a start date in January after a few minor legal technicalities are resolved with the council over the application.
Next will be at least part of the marina, which when finished will have around one third of the berthing capacity of the famous Kip marina across the water at Inverclyde, since McAlpine believes it will help to attract homebuyers to the area.
Mr Bolt said the “biggest unknown” was the rate of sale of the properties, which will range from flats to four-bedroom luxury houses.
He said: “Traditionally you might sell a dozen properties in the area a year. If we were to put so much more around it in terms of sailing and other amenities, the question is whether we can make the progress much quicker, because a dozen a year is a 20-year programme, and we want to have everything finished within between four and 10 years.”
He said the ferry terminal had been proposed by local company Western Ferries, which wants to run a ferry from neighbouring Bute to compete with services provided by rival Caledonian MacBrayne.
It is envisaged that McAlpine would pay for the construction and recoup the money in rental charges to the ferry company in later years.
Mr Bolt said the development had not received any serious objections, which contrasts with the company’s proposals to the Ministry of Defence six years ago to use the site’s deep water capabilities to set up a facility for decommissioning nuclear submarines. This was so fiercely opposed that the plan was cancelled.
However, the current plan did receive a few objections, one of which was from local resident and MoD employee William Ferguson for road safety reasons.
He agreed that the plans for the marina looked “quite stunning” but claimed that the often vicious weather made the site a “white elephant”.
Mr Ferguson said: “Anybody who buys a property on the shore front is going to take a hammering. You would have had to see a day like [last Thursday] to see what it can be like.”
Richard Kerr, planning officer at the council responsible for the application, said: “The Ardyne application has been to committee and been approved in principle subject to the applicants entering into legal agreements with the council about some offsite roadworks.
“A final decision won’t be issued until everything has been agreed. It’s just going between solicitors at the moment.”
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