Dawsholm Park is under threat, this time from a school.
A PRIVATE school in Glasgow is in talks with the council to buy one of the city’s public parks.
Dawsholm Park, between Kelvindale and Bearsden, is up for sale and Glasgow City Council is in “discussions” with St Aloysius College.
The Jesuit independent school, for boys and girls aged 3-18, is based in Hill Street, Garnethill. The park buy-up move has provoked “outrage”.
The park has sparrow hawks and squirrels and is popular with bird watchers and walkers.
There were proposals six years ago to see the site become a business park, but they never got off the ground because of strong opposition.
Tom Ralph, former bursar and now a consultant for the college, confirmed the school was considering Dawsholm Park, along with a “number of options”, to expand its sports facilities.
However, Steve Inch, the council’s director of development and regeneration, said: “We have had early discussions with St Aloysius.
“Other options include economic development of the site and retaining it for recreational use.
“The problem with the site is it used to be a coal mine, as well as tar and chemical works, so it is expensive to prepare for development.”
However, mother of two Caroline Johnston, who stays in Balcarres Avenue, Kelvindale, and runs Neil’s Wheels, an organisation committed to getting disabled people into sport, slammed the bid to sell the park.
She said: “The park has been left to go downhill for the last six or seven years and the
cynical side of me has to think the council is doing it deliberately so it can sell off the land.
“It would seem the council is trying to get this through the back door. Everyone I talk to is outraged about it.”
Another critic was Stephen Prince, secretary of Broomhill Sports Club, a community organisation run by West End parents which has 463 members.
He said the club asked the council a year ago if it could use Dawsholm Park as a permanent base for a community sports club with upgraded pitches and changing facilities but the council refused.
Mr Prince said: “Our request was to use the park and develop it because the blaes pitches were disused and changing facilities had been demolished.
“However, we got a reply this summer that the council would not consider this option. It said it had other plans for the park.”
27/11/06
Other plans for the park ? As usual Glasgow City Council are thinking of raping what is left of the green in our city and selling it off to the highest bidder. I wouldnt be suprised if they proposed sticking the Kelvin through a concrete tube.
Will keep you updated.
Original link after a text from Charlie
[tags]Dawsholm Park,Glasgow City Council,St Aloysius [/tags]
unfortunately from reading into it, it sounds like they may have already made their mind up on this one. people can only try and have their voices heard and hopefully there will be enough opposition. If you hear of any plans to oppose let me know how people are going about it.
if the council hadn’t sold off all existing sports ammeneties then we wouldn’t have some bloody private school trying to buy our parks, scandalous.
This is quite worrying, however, any development will have to go through the planning process. In short, this means that there will be no permitted development unitl there has been a full scale public consultation with time for objectors to view the plans and to air their objections at public local meetings. More importantly, the land may well be zoned as public open space or for nature conservation or recreation. The first document that should be examined is the local plan. This is a statutory , legal document that outlines the various policies and related zoning of land, and only under exceptional circumstances will the council allow development to take place on land that has been zoned for public open space, nature conservation etc. The local plan is also a public document and can be viewed on request , or sometimes on a council’s website. Without knowing all the details it is difficult to say at what stage this is at. However, i would suggest that as the council has not yet agreed a sale , i would think that any development is a long way off. There are other considerations such as ” developer’s contribution” (what used to be called planning gain), where planning permisison is granted with certain conditions that wouldbe of benefit to the local community. This often comes in the form of environmental improvements, play area or other community facilities. I hope that this makes things a bit clearer, but it sounds as if this is in the very early stages.