For more than 6 years now there has been talk of building a New Town on a large greenfield site off the A96 - near to
Inverness Airport and close to the tiny existing hamlet of
Tornagrain; from which the New Town would take its name.
I attended the
early public meetings at which the plans for this venture were outlined and heard
Andres Duany say quite clearly that the blue dot (referring to the place on a map where the New Town would be situated) is /was 'not going away'.
Well there has been very little talk of this New Town recently but plenty of references to developments in other areas of Inverness and Nairn.
For example, the
Inverness Courier today has an item on the new proposals for a site at
Inverness Retail and Business Park - click
here (and lets not forget that there is an outstanding application for 'bulky goods retail' a little further up the retail park site)
Then there's the item in the Press and Journal, also today:
Work on a new town centre to the east of Inverness could start by the end of the year as a legal agreement between the developers and Highland Council is set to be finalised shortly.
Consortium Inverness Estates has pledged to commit millions of pounds to infrastructure at the 2,500-home development at Stratton Farm, as part of the agreement which outlines planning gain.
The consortium, composed of Tulloch Homes of Inverness, Aviemore-based Upland Developments and Narden from Nairn, has agreed to instal roads and basic services, such as water and electrical supplies, at the 195-acre site, saving the council millions of pounds.
Read more: http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/2324426#ixzz1QCu4KjOJ
On June 20th a piece on the BBC web news, 'The Only Way is Essich' conveyed the views of Chartered Surveyors Souter and Jaffrey as being that:
...for much of the last decade developers have focused on east Inverness, but the firm expected the opening of the Asda and Tesco to revive interest in areas such as Lochardil and Holm.
Those living in the town of Nairn will know that Highland Council is preparing to consider whether or not to grant Planning in Principle for a planning application with significant and varied development on a very large site west of Nairn (the area of land here also contains an SSSI SPA and Ramsar site).
To this observer there certainly seems to have been a change of emphasis.
