COLIN CAMPBELL: Precious Inverness city centre green space has for too long gone to waste
Squashed between the millions being spent on the transformation of Inverness Castle and the Bught Park is a sizeable outlay of public funding for upgrading the Northern Meeting Park.
We don't know what will finally emerge at the castle or how powerful its impact will be but a lot is going on there. Changes at the Bught are visible for all to see. But I'd forgotten the Meeting Park was included in construction upheaval along the riverside until I almost ran into one of the trucks helping enable it. And that's been the fate of this prime location for many years - to be forgotten about.
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While there's a degree of curiosity at the very least about whether the new-look castle will live up to its "world class" billing and a continuing focus on the revamping of the Bught, the transformation - if that's what it is - of the Meeting Park seems barely on the radar.
It is the base for Northern Counties Cricket Club. And it has also hosted the occasional summer fete and a few other events such as a New Year music night with a patchy record of success. But other than that it has essentially been locked up and off-limits to the public for years.
The Meeting Park has as a neighbour Inverness Cathedral, which in the past three years has replaced the sealed-off castle as the most dominantly admired structure in the Highland capital. Just next to the cathedral is Ness Walk, thronged by tourists every summer evening. And beside that is the music Under Canvas entertainment which attracts so many people to the vibrant grounds of Eden Court.
No wonder some activists have been questioning why the Northern Meeting Park, which should be another riverside "jewel in the crown", has been left to slide into virtual oblivion.
There have been various rather half-hearted attempts to drag it back into life to blend in more with its busy and colourful surrounds, but so far these have come to nothing. The gates are opened now and again and it does regain contact with humanity but then it is locked and bolted again.
It's not as if the riverside and the landscape around it is viewed as inconsequential. Public debates over planned tilting piers and Gathering Places and whatever else raged for months and even years. A new clubhouse structure planned for the Bught was intensely scrutinised. Even a proposal to open a small fast food outlet in Ness Walk became a significant for and against talking point.
It will be interesting to see if the work going on there breathes new life and purpose into the Northern Meeting Park. But it may be time to consider something quite simple, straightforward and most of all inexpensive.
Why not knock down at least a section of the walls enclosing it and open it up to the public as another area of green space adjacent to the riverside? What's better - grassy green space or grassy green space blocked off by brick walls? The Meeting Park isn't some contaminated area that people have to be kept away from, though you might think that was the case given its long-term role of being a virtual exclusion zone.
It would still fulfil its sporting role and, as with the Bught, arrangements could be put in place to ensure no disruption there.
No one gathers at the Gathering Place, that ridiculous and ugly structure built at a cost of some £300,000 to satisfy the vanity of a few councillors. But it's quite possible people could actually meet at the Meeting Park, with the provision of a few picnic tables and seating. It could be a meeting place and more.
Open it up. Give the public access rather than blocking it off with walled barriers which serve no obvious purpose other than to ensure we all "Keep off the grass", in keeping with those much derided council signs which were once planted here, there and everywhere. A lot of public money is being poured into revamping the Northern Meeting Park. What's the point of that if it remains out of sight, out of mind, and largely out of use?
