City centre hotel plan rejected by councillors
COUNCILLORS have rejected plans for a 168-bedroom hotel, restaurant, bar and leisure complex proposed for the site of the former Glebe Street swimming pool in Inverness.
Members of the south planning committee queued up to condemn the developers’ design, slating it as “bogging", "hideous” and like “a mistake from the 1960s”.
Inverness Ness-side SNP councillor Ron MacWilliam defended the design submitted by Dutch property company Vastint, describing it as “a grand building that you’d expect to see in a serious city centre”.
The committee nevertheless voted 8-7 to back Central Ward councillor Richard Laird’s amendment which rejected the planning application on the grounds that it “failed to make a positive contribution to the city’s architecture” and therefore contravened the local plan.
For the full story see Thursday's Highland News.
