PAISLEY has not always enjoyed the best of reputations but the Renfrewshire town is trying to shed its old skin and metamorphose into something more appealing. A bid to become the UK’s City of Culture in 2021 has been the catalyst for this latest attempt at urban renewal, with plans in the pipeline for a new cinema and performing arts theatre venue, and a raft of new restaurants, cafes and shops sprouting up throughout the area.

Hoping to add to this pattern of Paisley positivity are supporters of the local football club. St Mirren has been on the market for almost seven years now and a second attempt to deliver a majority shareholding into the hands of their fans is well underway. The plan this time, albeit on a smaller scale, is to follow the model used successfully by Hearts, with a wealthy, well-intentioned supporter taking on the bulk of the initial cost of the takeover before gradually being bought out by the fans.

Filling the Foundation of Hearts role in this instance is SMiSA, the St Mirren Independent Supporters Association, while the benevolent Ann Budge figure is Gordon Scott, a 51 year-old Buddie who grew up watching Fergie’s Furies at Love Street before making his money via the construction and property sectors. Should the deal to buy out chairman Stewart Gilmour and the rest of his selling consortium go through, then Scott, a former director himself, would be the man calling the shots for the best part of the next decade.

The nuts and bolts of the deal require 1000 fans to commit by June 19 to paying a minimum of £12 a month, and with three weeks left, SMISA and Scott are still around 300 subscribers shy. Fan ownership is not always an easy sell when a club, like St Mirren, is not in obvious dire straits but with rival bidders still hovering and the current board admitting they have run out of steam, the feeling among SMiSA and Scott is that the time is right to deliver the club to the supporters.

“When 10,000 Hours [the previous community-led bid] tried to buy the club we were in the Premiership,” says Scott, sipping a coffee in a café overlooking Paisley Abbey. “We’re now in the Championship so you could argue it’s more of a crisis now than it was back then. We’re a rudderless ship in a way, with those in charge admitting they no longer have the same energy or drive. It’s just about getting a fresh impetus to lift the place once more.”

Scott’s commitment to the cause is such that he would happily forego his current lifestyle that sees him divide his time between Las Vegas, where he rents and sells property, and Puerto Banus in the south of Spain, where he has just overseen the construction of a £3m house that is about to go on the market.

“This would be my full-time job,” he confirms. “Vegas is set up and will run itself, and Spain is just a three-hour flight away if I need to go back from time to time. I was really hands-on with this first house there so that I wouldn’t have to be with any future houses. It will be less time-consuming and I could devote almost all my time to St Mirren.”

Scott has tried to buy the club on his own since it went on the market in September 2009 but feels now a collaborative effort is the right way forward. “In the past I made a couple of offers for the club myself but now I don’t think it’s right for St Mirren to be owned by just one guy,” he adds. “Now the fans have a chance to gradually buy me out and run the club themselves.”