£40,000 loan for playhouse

MONTROSE Playhouse Project has received the helping hand of a £40,000 loan from the town’s common good fund to assist the cashflow of the ambitious scheme as it gathers momentum.

A full meeting of Angus Council ratified a decision made by local members to make the loan, but not to provide it interest free.

The authority’s finance director said that would set a precedent and the sum will be subject to the council’s 4.78% loans pool rate, with the money to be paid back within a year.

It leaves the Montrose common good fund standing at just over £275,000.

The playhouse project has also received a £1,000 sponsorship boost from local law firm Thorntons.

North-east company Bancon Construction Ltd has been appointed as the main contractor for the conversion of the Mall building into a threescreen cinema and community arts centre.

Work is due to begin in earnest later this month with the group hoping for an early 2021 opening.

A Scottish Government Regeneration Capital Grant Fund of £2.26 million and a Screen Scotland Cinema Equipment Fund boost of almost £100,000 have also been given to the cinema project.

The project volunteers have also raised more than £60,000 through crowdfunding and sponsorship, and hope to add a further £150,000.

A SCHEME has been brewing in Dundee city cen- tre to serve up stronger community links – and three community officers visited Coffee and Co to put Coffee-with-a-Cop into action.

Linzi McAlpine and Ashley Thom, of the city centre community team, dropped in along with Sergeant Martin Jenkins as part of the new scheme to chat with customers and hear about any issues they wanted to raise.

Ashley said: “Other teams are out in Dundee in places such as Lochee and Fintry and basically Coffee-with-a-Cop is to make us more accessible

THE thorny issue of car parking in Dundee has raised further controversy.

It has emerged that many of the recently installed parking meters are unable to take credit card payments.

West End councillor Fraser Macpherson said he was astonished at the lack of modern equipment.

He called on Dundee City Council to “get into the 21st Century” and revealed he had spoken to the authority’s parking and sustainable transport team and was told there are plans to upgrade the machines at the Waterfront.

Mr Macpherson said: “Just a few days ago we had SNP councillor Mark Flynn standing next to a parking meter in the city praising the convenience of contactless payment parking meters and claiming ‘it is important to residents and visitors to the city that we offer them the most convenient ways of paying for parking’.

“It is astonishing he did not seem to know that many of the council’s meters are still stuck in somewhere around 1975 and can only take cash.