MORE than 50,000 objections have been lodged for the controversial £30m Flamingo Land holiday resort on the shores of Balloch which prompted a Save Loch Lomond campaign.
Developers last week submitted a new masterplan for the project, renamed Lomond Banks and formerly submitted to Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park which features a water park, 60-bedroom apart-hotel, a craft brewery, boat house, leisure centre and restaurants.
The developers, Iconic Leisure Developments hope to complete the project in 2024 and say they expect as many as 80 full time jobs, 50 part-time jobs and to 70 seasonal posts to the area.
In the eleven days since the masterplan was unleashed, 10,000 have added their names to a petition objecting to the project by Iconic Leisure, the firm behind the Flamingo Land theme park of rollercoasters, water rides and flumes in North Yorkshire. The petition portal was set up by Scottish Green MSP Ross Greer who had said that if the objections rose above 50,000 it would "set a record for any planning application in Scottish history".
He said: “After the first thirty thousand objections were lodged, Flamingo Land delayed lodging their final proposals by months. We were all led to believe they might take this massive demonstration of public opinion on board. That couldn’t have been further from the case.
READ MORE: Flamingo Land renamed in fresh vision for project that spawned Save Loch Lomond campaign
“Their plans would still, according to their own impact assessment, see damage to ancient woodland, pollution of standing and running water, red squirrel and otter deaths and more.
"Local residents’ concerns about the huge volume of traffic haven’t been addressed, job-creation figures have been revised down and fundamentally, this is still the sell-off of public land in our world famous national park, all for a private developer to profit from. Given all of that, I’m certainly not surprised we’ve seen ten thousand more objections in the last week alone.”
It was claimed in October, last year that a record number of people objected to plans by the Trump Organization to build a large new housing estate near the US president’s golf course north of Aberdeen.
More than 3,000 people had submitted formal objections to the plans, with another 19,000 people signing an online petition protesting against the scheme to build 550 private homes and golfers’ chalets on farmland beside the course.
The Loch Lomond development also features activity areas including a tree top walk, events and performance areas, children’s play areas a monorail, forest adventure rides and picnic and play areas.
It also features 32-bedroom budget accommodation, 131 self-catering units, six private houses and 15 apartments.
Iconic say Lomond Banks will be a "world class family holiday village" ensuring more people can experience everything the area has to offer "in line with the vision that has been held by development agencies and the local authority since the early 1990s".
They were selected as the "preferred developer" after a national marketing campaign for a 44-acre site by Scottish Enterprise. That gave the company exclusivity over the area to undertake site investigations such as geotechnical, ecology, flood risk, utilities and access studies.
The Scottish-owned company has said it hopes to build on the existing success of Loch Lomond Shores which has seen visitor levels steadily increase to 1.25 million visitors annually.
Allan McQuade, a director of the Scottish Enterprise has insisted the proposal "is not going to destroy the vista of Loch Lomond".
He added: "There is huge opposition but due process will be followed in terms of the planning process."
Iconic declined to comment on the petition but have said that the project would enhance the natural landscape and improve wildlife habitat.
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