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I 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' )