A senior Angus Council source has warned the escalating Forfar “superpub” stooshie could leave the authority with “a large amount of egg on its face”.
Opposition is mounting against the prospect of a private six-figure deal between national pub chain JD Wetherspoon and the council for 150-year-old offices in the heart of the town.
And the leading figure said a closed-doors deal should never have been considered if lessons had been learned from a decade-old debacle over the disposal of the St James House council HQ to developers for a supermarket site.
Town business and licensed trade interests have now criticised the way the possible deal has emerged and claim the outcome could be “catastrophic” for them.
Last week, councillors voted in private to proceed with negotiations with Wetherspoons over the offices at 5-7 The Cross, which house members’ services and the room of the Angus provost.
The JD Wetherspoon offer is understood to be in the region of £400,000 and the authority said any sell-off would be subject to planning permission and licensing.
It has since emerged that a prominent Angus businessman has lodged a counter offer for the property.
Angus Council has declined to make any comment on the second offer.
Foresters Restaurant manager Scott Preston said: “The negotiations for the sale have been done in an underhand way.
“There was a closed, private council meeting. The minutes of the meeting have not been made public yet.
“Ultimately, we feel it would be a bad thing for the community, a bad thing for the town centre and maybe a bad thing for jobs in the long term.
“Although a Wetherspoons might provide jobs initially, the knock-on effects to local suppliers would be catastrophic.”
Following the St James House situation which saw the council eventually net £1.8 million for a site that was to have been off-loaded privately for £700,000 a policy was brought in to ensure surplus council property would only be sold on the open market.
The senior council source said: “I thought they would have learned their lesson from St James House.”