Miele's Gelateria hit out at the council agreeing Academy Street plans
The Miele’s brothers who run the best known Gelateria in Inverness expressed what Highland Council agreeing to the Academy Street plans means for them as they fear “a massive percentage of sales and there is no safety net for us here.”
They were speaking directly after the Inverness committee agreed to proceed to the next stage with its plans for a revamp of Academy Street, a move that has shaken the city’s business community.
The brothers David and Michael Miele have already said they fear that if the plans are implemented then it “ultimately means closure” and them moving out of the city centre.
Michael asked: “Are they willing to put their wages on the line? The biggest fear is that we are going to start to lose a massive percentage of sales and there is no safety net for us here.”
“Our question to the council that has voted to push this through is – when we do start to lose the sales, that full time person’s wages, the risk is all being put on us here, are any of them willing to stand up and put that pay that we lose? So that we don’t lose that member of the staff, are they willing to put that on the line?
“We want people walking in and around Inverness, it's great for our business, absolutely fantastic. We want to see it change, there is no ‘we don’t want the change’ but there are several other businesses around us that require somebody to come and pick something up in the car.
“Without them, this whole end of town becomes dead, back to what it was previously. We do need the other businesses around us, and they and we, need some sort of support and safety net from the council.”
Brother and fellow co-owner, Michael also expressed his dismay with the council’s proceedings and ultimate decision – though the local authority will vote on this again before it gets the final go-ahead.
“I am feeling pretty disappointed,” he said. “I think the order in which they are doing things isn’t correct. The impact on the businesses hasn’t been put through properly. No independent impact assessment has been done and that should have been done first.
“We shouldn’t be putting a traffic regulation order in at the same time as this vote going through. That shouldn’t be the first step, that should be the last step before they move onto the next stages.
“Nobody really knew about this until the last few weeks, we only found out in March that there was something actually happening and they said it's been going on for eight years.
“Well, we only found out six months ago that it was potentially going to happen. We are going to keep fighting, we are going to keep pushing and see where it goes from there.
“It was mentioned that they are now going into a fight to try and get funding to do a park and ride and that but there is no guarantee that’s going to happen. If that is the case and that doesn’t go ahead but this has happened, and academy street is now shut off to people, who knows what will happen.”
He also vowed not to give up, saying: “We are very disappointed but we are not going to stop fighting. We do not know what is going to happen with our businesses, we are fearful for our staff, our staff levels and being able to maintain them levels of customers and therefore staff wages and everything.
“We think that there will be a deterioration in the city centre and that it will be a long time before that comes back.”
