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have an alternative suggestion in mind to hopefully sway the
'Highland Council' and 'British Waterways' with - where the concept
of my nautical-themed museum could be extensively extended in a way
that this land could be used as a 'park area / fun and informative
visitor attraction' for everyone, and potentially end up as a major
tourist attraction for Inverness.
The
trees and bushes along the whole stretch of the basin would only
require to be thinned out, leaving many of them in place to allow for
areas of natural interest...the ground would be fully cleared of
scrub however, and be newly-grassed for much of it's length...and
meandering footpaths would then take you alongside the entire length
of this 'Muirtown Basin' land, with short off-shoots into clearings
amongst the trees where various 'nautical'-style, 'hands-on'
attractions are situated – where you'd come across for instance, a
Viking Ship, a Pirate Ship, a Submarine etc built to a big
enough scale where you can climb aboard and interact with them,
similar to some of the attractions I currently have at the museum. (Click the images below for a larger view, please allow time for the images to load) Aswell
as that, the 'Muirtown Basin' itself could be used for boat hire,
canoe hire, and other water activities, so that the stretch of water
in the 'Muirtown Basin' is fully utilized as part of this project.
Whilst also having some kind of eaterie(s) in the way of say, a
sit-down restaurant, tea-room, cafe, which could be situated at
various points along the way of the whole area to cater for visitors. This
could be run in conjunction with Scottish Waterways whereby they
could run several of the restaurants and/or attractions. In the long
term, many people could become employed through this scheme.
Ideally
we would like help to gain a car park for the museum. Our most ideal
place would be the B&Q building that is currently empty,
unfortunately we understand a retailer has taken interest in renting
the B&Q building. I
would like to ask if there is a way the Highland Council could work
with us to convince B&Q to accept giving the building to our
museum instead. After 10 years we feel the museum would be making
money through expansion, a shop and a cafe' as well as events,
parties, weddings etc. We would also seek to gain funding through
Heritage Lottery Fund, crowd funding, donations etc. We
feel the building is perfect for a car park for our museum and the
building itself is perfect for hosting a variety of maritime exhibits
and attractions. It is already purpose built. The
museum is already very successful, currently we are ranked highly on
'TripAdvisor' and have received a 2014 excellence award. It has been
built solely by myself with recycled boats and materials. One can
only imagine how interesting the Muirtown Basin could be if we had
funding and more people on board.
Stanley
Fraser,
Creator
of 'Ship Space' ( formerly 'Titanic Museum' ) |