Car park convenience offers added benefits to marine tourists
After two and a half years of hard work Fort William Marina & Shoreline Community Interest Company (FWMSCIC) celebrated the official opening of the Fort William pontoons office and toilet block on Saturday January 31.
The office and toilet facility is the latest project by a group of local volunteers who created Fort William Marina & Shoreline Community Interest Company (FWMSCIC).
Despite many hoops to jump and lots of red tape to get through the volunteers had secured around £142k in funding and added £16k of the CIC’s funds to make the project a reality.
The West End Car Park facility was opened by Councillor Andrew Baxter who said: "This is a wonderful new asset for Fort William and Lochaber and will enable the area to capitalise on marine tourism.
"A key ingredient to the success of our towns are communities that are taking action to improve the places where they live. We want to empower communities to lead change.
"Fort William and Lochaber have a lot to offer visitors, from the rugged scenery to a variety of famous attractions.
"We hope that the Scottish Government sees huge potential in developing the marine and coastal tourism sector and will share the enthusiasm of the industry and communities such as Fort William in what can be achieved.
"What you see today is a credit to the dedication and hard work of FWMSCIC’s committee."
Special guests on the day were children from Caol Primary School who designed the colourful frontage of the containers.
FWMSCIC wish to thank for their help and support with the project which has been so very much appreciated over the years including Ord Group, A Kennedy Construction, All Round Signs, MacPhersons Welding, Ewan McKay from SSE as well as all the other suppliers who made this project happen.
They are also extremely grateful to their funders without which the facility would not have been possible.
These were: EB Scotland (£50,000); Community Regeneration Fund (£10,000); Community Regeneration Fund (£74,292.21); Tesco Groundworks (£1,000); Lochaber Community Fundraising (£300); Lochaber Rotary Club (£500); Scottish Hydro Electric Community Trust Grant (£5,700).
Moira Robinson, Director and Chair, FWMSCIC, said: "Fort William has been in sore need of having facilities such as these for all marine tourists and locals.
"It has been a huge amount of work to get this installed and it is wonderful to see them already being well used by many different folk."
FWMSCIC have plans to further improve their facilities and hope that by people seeing what they have done it will show to the powers that be what can be achieved and galvanise further development along the waterfront.
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