Proposals

Draft proposal for Town House site

Proposals for Lochgelly

Andres’ key points from his closing presentation included:

• Focusing on developing the town’s railway station and surrounding area to make the most of the rail connection to Scotland’s capital city.

• Locating a sensitively-designed supermarket near the Town House to anchor the town and draw shoppers to the independent speciality shops on Bank St and Main St. Allowing a supermarket on the outskirts would kill the local shops.

• Creating a plaza next to the Town House and supermarket, opening up an approach to the Church on Bank Street which could be converted into an attractive indoor market.

• Converting the Town House into a senior care centre which would provide its users with easy access to the town centre and all local amenities.

• Supporting shops on Bank St and Main St to urgently bring their premises up to modern standards. A retail management scheme could also allow parking on Bank Street to boost retail and slow down the traffic.

• Investing in developing one first class golf course and clubhouse on the site between Cowdenbeath and Lochgelly with bus links which would provide an accessibility presently enjoyed by locals.

• Creating a business park to the East of the town including an aspiration for a rail link.

• Improving the standards of housing through simple redesign and repainting, rather than demolition and reconstruction.

• Developing the town square into a public space which has real energy through redevelopment of buildings to the edge, removing the small car park and improved landscaping.

• Investing in the Arts Centre, incorporating the library and revamping one of the key entrances to the town.

What happens now?

Although work is continuing on the longer-term vision, a project group is now in place to move forward a series of short-term projects including:

‘Art in shop windows’ – look out on 1 March for a series of colourful vinyls in windows of empty retail units in the town centre.  These are aimed to brighten the town centre and also keep Andres vision in the forefront of local minds.  This follows on from the success of simiar initiatives in Kirkcaldy and Dunfermline last year.

Work will also shortly be starting on landscaping to the areas of land between the new business incubator units and the Miners’ Institute and a perception study will kick off at the end of February and run till mid March.