You know, a friend of mine gave me a heads-up on this astonishing and ground breaking development in the Glasgow Herald today. I rushed out to buy it! I don't take the Herald regularly as it is sadly parochial - unlike the Press and Journal which is, what shall we say, just local, but the property pages today offer a mouthwatering selection of tasty treats so I might have to break the subscriptions budget and sign up for it!
Anyway, entitled Business park to bank on, (cleverly combining three words which mean so much to entrepreneurs today not to mention the general public), this article describes a stunner - a one hundred percenter right between the eyes. Lomondgate Business Park will transform the Vale of Leven and Loch Lomond into something unique and wonderful. Like a conflation of Trafford Park and Lake Como, this fires a big cannonball across the bows of other unique developments in Scotland. Businessmen will be speedboating up and down Loch Lomond with their mobiles glued to their ears! Balloch cafes will be filled with suits doing deals and all this enterprise will trickle down into local employment of course as I've explained before!
It's fantastic! Cliché artist Andy Scott has been commissioned to produce a stag sculpture as a dramatic entrance to the business park - it's just another of his horses of course - but with horns this time, so it's an easy win for him. Amazing how even he has become commodified by the wonders of the business world.
I've picked out some of the main features of the proposed development below and you can see the rest here but just look at this list:
- buildings will have a 'Very Good' BREEAM rating, cleverly avoiding committing to the 'Excellent' rating
- carpet tiles - amazing!
- male and female toilets - that's one box ticked for the inclusiveness agenda
- tea preparation areas on each floor - a thoughtful touch indicating that women will indeed be employed there
Of course this development was approved before a planning application was submitted as we expect nowadays. The area is no stranger to classy upmarket developments so there's plenty of precedent as we expert planners say. I haven't written about the fabulous Lomond Shores yet or the other well known retail outlets in the area but this part of Scotland is literally studded with different ways to shop and do business. A veritable dynamo of the Scottish economy.
Two final points. The word Lomondgate suggests there is something wrong - think Watergate and many others, so not a great choice guys. Also, I make the comparison with Lake Como because of the timeless beauty of that area and the fact that it has historically contained much development. So the people who live in Loch Lomond needn't feel that they are being raped by enterprise or that the character of this well known beauty spot will change. After all, the Italian Fascist Party choose to have one of their headquarters buildings on the shores of Lake Como in the 1930s and people still travel from far and wide to see that today. No comparison intended with the Lomondgate Business Park of course.
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