The land where Tesco had planned to build a new superstore in Fort William, has been bought by the Highland Council to allow a new hospital to be built.
The eight acre site at Blar Mor on the edge of the West Highland town, is also earmarked for the potential development of a new science academy for the West Highland College, part of the University of the Highlands and Islands.
The supermarket giant confirmed in January it had cancelled plans to build a new supermarket for Fort William, along with the ditching of seven other new stores in Scotland.
Since then a partnership of public organisations has been working to acquire the valuable site to put it to work for the local community.
Following detailed negotiations, formal missives have now been concluded for the local authority to purchase the site from Tesco for £2 million.
As part of the deal, once funding is in place to build the new hospital, NHS Highland will transfer the existing hospital site to the Highland Council to deliver much needed affordable housing in the centre of Fort William.
Crucial to the project has been the role of NHS Highland Board Member, Michael Foxley, a former leader of the Highland Council and former GP inFort William. He said: “As instigator of the plan, this is a great result for teamwork and genuine community planning across six public bodies. “
The council's chair of Planning and Development, Audrey Sinclair said: “This is a tremendous and long awaited success for the Lochaber area. It is a good example of partners working together to achieve success. The deal will enable the area to flourish with the prospect of a new much needed hospital and additional facilities for the West Highland College.
“I would like to add recognition for former Council Leader Michael Foxley who was a significant force behind this project and worked to get Scottish government support to make this happen.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article