Down but far from out

The waiting is over and the decision has been formally made on the Clyde Street Centre.

Have we failed or flopped (as it was so eloquently described in yesterday’s Advertiser) and is it a terminal blow to Helensburgh Heroes' ambitions?

Well the short answer is technically yes and definitely no. You do not have to be Einstein to work out that we must have ‘failed’ otherwise we would be now nursing a few sore heads (actually I am due to confrontation with a wooden seagull – but that’s another story), and getting down to the business of securing funding etc but I don’t think we should be counting ourselves as failures just yet.

It was always going to be a very big ‘ask’ to actually win the building and convince the Council that there was a viable alternative to their plans. There is correspondence posted on the internet between an individual and a senior A&B Council member that indicates that the Council was seeking two things from the marketing of the site: one was to determine the market value of the building e.g. was it worth 50p, £1, £1M, £10M etc before making a decision on possible office development. The other was to determine which option to pursue in developing, either with the CE building, or separately and adjacently, office accommodation to replace an existing number of different Council buildings in Helensburgh and Lomond.

Whichever way you roll the dice, the council was always going to have its offices on this site. So you could ask – why did we bother if we knew this? The answer was quiet simply because we felt we had too. It’s a known fact that the odds of winning the lottery are 14M:1 and yet that doesn’t prevent millions of people buying a ticket every week. And why do they buy a ticket? Because even those odds are a hell of lot shorter than the ones you would be offered for not buying one at all. Had we not entered a bid then we would have stood no chance, however slim, of obtaining the building, and then we really would have failed, we would have failed our own core objectives of trying to procure arts and leisure facilities for the benefit of the community.

The CEC bid also gave us the opportunity, as a group, to demonstrate that we are innovative, professional, serious and that we can move quickly, when we need too. And hopefully we have shown to A&B Council that we are keen to establish a community/local authority relationship that could deliver benefits for all.

So where does the decision leave us?

Nothing has changed. Helensburgh Heroes was not formed to buy the Clyde Street Centre. That just happened to be the first project that we targeted. Other opportunities will present themselves to us in the coming months and we will ensure that we are ready for them.

And on that note, I’m off to gargle with Listermint in readiness for tomorrow’s recording session. It has the makings of a great fun event. It may not quiet have been the perfect week but let’s hope that it ends with the 'perfect day'….