Graham touts idea to revamp hotel eyesore
The site of the former McLaren Hotel, in the heart of Brodick, is a complete eyesore. It has now lain derelict since it closed its doors five years ago. After much wrangling planning permission was finally granted for a new £9 million aparthotel in December 2018 but since then nothing has happened.
Now local businessman Graham Chappell has come up with a plan he thinks could breathe new life into the prime location. It is just an idea and would need the co-operation of the owners, but it is worth giving some thought.
The McLaren site is clearly struggling and I have often wondered about alternative uses for it. In today’s uncertain times, I feel that flexibility is the key, rather than sinking money into another hotel or other single-use idea which could easily become unstuck in a crisis, such as we have at the moment.
Brodick has no mixed commercial indoor or outdoor space that you would feel okay about ‘loitering in’ if the weather wasn’t great or you were meeting someone. We have no shopping mall and I have often wondered what an outdoor Arran mall could look like given that it would need to be natural, friendly, and aesthetically pleasing.
To keep the budget down, to keep flexibility high on the agenda and to offer something in keeping with our beautiful island, it would also need to attract small business owners. As one myself, I know how hard premises are to come by and the shore front of Brodick is absolutely the best place to be if you want to benefit from the island’s key area for footfall.
With that in mind, may I present an idea to stir some interest perhaps in the minds of the current owners of the land, whether they’d see fit to operate this themselves, or sell the land to interested investors in the community.
The idea would obviously start with levelling the current building and starting with a blank canvas. Then, construction of large sweeping paved area, with up to a dozen log cabins, perhaps 6m by 5m, with some larger ones included too. One could serve as a toilet block, another as a street-side decked café, a central one as a coffee bar and the surrounding ones as shops, hairdressing salon, tourist information centres and so on.
At , say, £10-£15k per annum rental on each unit, with popup stalls and other sources of income readily achievable, the site could cover the costs of the initial outlay in less than 10 years. Patio paving throughout, you could have picnic tables, water features, potted trees and even large shade sails to cover some of the pedestrian areas from any strong sun or sudden summer showers (these would need to be removed in winter). But then, in the winter, the area could look stunning with Christmas trees, lights and patio heaters or barbecue stalls – a real ‘all round’ attraction and offering tenants the best of an area where a relaxing shopping atmosphere could easily be achievable.
I’m no architect or landscape designer, so excuse the crudeness of the drawing. But it does, I hope, merely suggest an idea for a low cost - possibly less than £1m - investment in a critical part of Brodick where something needs to be done as soon as possible.