Progress on Station Hotel

Thanks to Brian Whittle and Bill Grant for raising the subject of the Station Hotel and for giving us an opportunity to tell the public through the newspaper about progress towards its restoration.

As a historic or architecturally significant building it will get public money to make it look good again.

That money is available, but in order to avoid any waste of taxpayers cash the Scottish Government insists that each project goes through a process to prove its worth at each step of the way.

Firstly, they want to see a desire among the local residents to save the building and this was demonstrated by two well attended public meetings in the town hall.

Next the building structure was stabilised with a debris proof access scaffold which protects the travelling public using the station and should prevent any more disruption to train services.

The plastic tent is to protect the building from the weather and reduce further deterioration.

Now that we have a condition report from consultants, the next step is to see what the public want to do with the building and to determine a use which will bring in an income and help it to ‘ wash its face’ thereafter. Suggestions so far include council offices to replace Burns house, art galleries to house Ayr’s unseen collection, a museum of Ayr’s past and famous people, or a community centre to replace the demolished Carrick Street Halls.

From the 50s, chain stores pushed people out of town centres by neglecting the housing above their shops.

Now that urban retail is in headlong retreat, most people see that the only way forward is to repopulate empty buildings with people.

Our research shows that in a population of 45,000 in Ayr, less than 100 live in the town centre. The Scottish Government makes money available and encourages communities, through land reform legislation, to seize the opportunity of low values and empty buildings to get the kind of towns that they, the people, want. We are going with the flow.

We invite suggestions, including those of Brian and Bill. If we can think of nothing else there is money for residential projects, and station upgrades.

Talking of money. The consultants’ report, in arriving at a cost of refurbishment of £ 10m, assumes that the building will be restored as a hotel.

This is unlikely unless a hotel group comes forward to take the building on, which would be fine.

More likely it will be a mixed use, including a museum, art galleries, station booking hall, an elegant buffet and housing. Gutting the building back to its bare walls inside to refit it for new purposes would be cheaper than the piecemeal restoration of it as a hotel. The cost does not seem insurmountable, if Ayr thinks enough of itself to retain a building of the quality which we admire when we visit Paris or Prague.

Harry Corrigan, Ayr Cleanupyouract

With regards to Paul Scott’s report on the sewage spill at Rankinston I would like to say this to Paul, for decades

I complained to both East Ayrshire Council and Scottish Water about the same issues of sewage spills in Drongan.

I have photographic evidence of larges pills of raw efluent being spread over wide areas both within the kids swing park area and the surrounding grass land at Carston Drive.

This happens every time there is a heavy rain fall. I have seen the man hole covers being blown off by the shear force of the water and creating fountains of about a foot high spewing out onto the surrounding ground.

However because chopping wood with a blunt axe soon becomes a chore, I have now given up calling Scottish Water at their headquarters at Fairmilehead Edinburgh. I did this for so long I was on first name terms with the staff and to be fair to them they would always attend quickly and clear up the mess.

But clearing up is not addressing the problem which is that the system is massively way over capacity and this will continue to get worse because of all the new build projects taking place within our district.

Most people will be unaware that all sewage from Rankinston, Hayhill, Sinclairston and Killoch passes through the village of Drongan before reaching the treatment plant at Low Coylton.

EAC have been turning a blind eye to this issue because they obviously don’t consider it to be high priority for them, and they will continue to aprove planning aplications for newbuilds, but I would be willing to bet it is most certainly would be an urgent concern if the same spills were to be happening anywhere within the Kilmarnock district.

Bill Gibson

Drongan