Old HC offices may need to go
I’ve not been updating MyNairn for a while, after finalling moving my business into a flat overlooking the High St.
Business conditions in the UK still remain tough, so better to focus on work at the moment.
However, I did look at the old HC offices (pic above) to gauge their suitability for buying and renovating as offices.
It’s a very visible location, has own parking, and from the outside in genreal appeared an ideal location.
I considered that if I were able to get funding from the banks, I could redevelop the building, and run one half of the building as offices for my own business, and let the other half to other businesses.
So I contacted the HC about taking a look inside.
As expected, the place is a mess and needs thoroughly gutting and redoing.
However, while the section of the building on the right would probably be fine for converting into offices, the section of the building on the left did not seem viable.
The trouble with it resides in the fact that it has only a few rooms, and these tend to be tiny. The biggest was about 8′x8′, which is a poor size. Most were smaller.
It’s also obvious it used to be a police station/prison, as it still has three small cells, with the original iron-reinforced doors on them!
Expecting the walls to be thick as well means that wi-fi probably won’t work so well in there.
So in the end, I had to come away think that the building in general would be unfit for use as offices and drop my big idea.
I know some people have already raised a voice about retaining the old office buildings as they are, but I suspect that any developer seriously looking to take them on may need to demolish the existing buildings, because I do not think they are suitable for modern use.
No doubt that comment will raise some hackles in the community councils, but if a developer does make such a suggestion, local groups are going to need to be prepared for the potential realities of the situation.
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I wondered what was happening to you as you hadn’t updated for so long. Glad to hear you seem to be doing OK though.
As for that building and the old community centre, not to mention the Regal/Co-op and petrol station ‘fiasco’ area, well I think they need to be demolished and redeveloped in some way or ways asap. Let’s hope the usual Nairn “keep things as they always have been” brigade won’t be successful in preventing that side of the A96 being brought into the 21st century. I may not exactly ‘love’ the new Community Centre or Police Station, but both are a huge improvement on what was there before. The change of use proposed for the Bus Station was certainly not ideal, but I hope the developers won’t be deterred entirely from putting forward alternative plans to redevelop this eyesore.
Oh, I would expect plenty of protests about any suggestion of pulling down the old office/prison building.
Sadly, I think there may be little alternative.