Forfar’s 112-year-old former swimming pool is about to go under the hammer.
The baths have lain empty since being closed in early 2017.
Angus Council efforts to find a buyer for The Vennel building have come to nothing.
A previous deal with a developer fell through.
So now the council’s selling agents, Shepherd Commercial, are putting the 9,321 sq ft town centre building up for auction.
A guide price of £50,000 has been put on the distinctive sandstone property.
Scott Robertson, of Shepherd’s Dundee office, said: “This former swimming pool offers a potential development opportunity and, as such, we anticipate it making a big splash at our forthcoming auction.”
The auction is to be held online at www.sdlauctions.co.uk on Thursday September 1 at 2.30pm.
Scottish steel magnate Andrew Carnegie gifted the baths to the town on a site provided by textile firm Don Bros. Buist.
The Fife philanthropist was at the opening ceremony in October 1910.
But the pool was declared surplus to requirements when the new Forfar Community Campus opened in 2017.
Angus Council then put the C-listed building up for sale.
And on 2019 Shepherds reported “reasonable and varied interest” in the building, which has car parking beside it.
But it failed to sell.
The council is also preparing to knock down another town leisure facility which has lain empty for the past five years.
Bulldozers will move in on Lochside leisure centre in October.
The demolition project is scheduled to last five months.
It will bring to an end a five-year saga surrounding the centre’s future.
The site will return to parkland after Court of Session judges declared it common good in a landmark ruling.
It came after two local businessmen challenged the demolition plan, saying Lochside had years of life left in it.
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