Affordable housing has been floated as a “common-sense” option for the use of the old Montrose Swimming Pool site.
Closed for a year following its replacement with a new £9 million pool at the town’s Marine Avenue sports centre, the 40-year-old building remains on the market after Angus councillors approved its sale earlier this year.
So far there has been only tentative open market interest in the boarded-up building, including a community group’s aspiration to convert the property into a cinema.
Now a local developer has put forward the idea of building affordable homes on the cleared site, with the rubble from the pool being used to infill a nearby railway cutting to create the foundation for additional houses there.
“This is an idea whose time is now. It is common sense,” said developer Robert Alexander, who in 2007 won a planning appeal case for outline housing permission for the former railway cutting at Rosehill Road, Montrose.
The homes there have never been built but the developer has now entered informal discussions with Angus planners over a larger residential development on the railway cutting.
“The estimates I have heard for the demolition of the old pool seem to be high but the site is fully serviced and you could easily put up to 14 houses there,” Mr Alexander said.
“The council say a percentage of each development should be affordable homes but I would like to see all the houses there and on the railway cutting being affordable properties.”
The housing idea has generated debate on the Facebook page set up to highlight the Montrose Playhouse Project, a community group applying for start-up funding to further the dream of bringing a cinema back to the town.
At present, however, both the housing and cinema plans remain pipe dreams.
A spokesman for the council said: “The old swimming pool in Montrose is currently for sale on the open market.
“While the council has received some informal interest from several organisations, including for potential community use, no formal offer has yet been received and there are currently no planning applications for the site under consideration.”