Fresh plans for former Cally school

Dec 2 2011 by Denis Brown, Perthshire Advertiser Friday

AFTER failing to attract a buyer on the open market, Perth’s former Caledonian Road Primary School is now tipped to be reborn as affordable housing.

Declared surplus to requirements and put up for sale last year, the inner-city institution has remained ‘dead in the water’ despite its prime location.

Now, with the flat-lining property market unlikely to bounce back any time soon, Perth and Kinross Council is exploring alternative options for disposing of the listed building and raising revenue.

Councillors deliberated behind closed doors on a report prepared by PKC’s planning and regeneration head about the school’s proposed disposal.

After the meeting, participants’ lips were firmly zipped, including the meeting’s vice-convener, Cllr George Hayton.

“There’s a fair number of properties we’re seeking to dispose of and see on their way, as it were, and that’s just one of them,” he said.

“There may be a story in this and certainly a good news story, so when it goes public, you’ll find out.”

However, more digging elsewhere revealed that although not set in concrete after this week’s meeting, plans are in the pipeline for the Caledonian Road icon to become a housing association project.

Established in 1892, the school shut in 2009 when pupils switched to the Glenearn Community Campus, after which PKC’s music centre moved in briefly before relocating to the North Inch Community Campus.

When the site was put up for sale last year, Michael Facenna at estate agent Knight Frank’s Glasgow office was evasive on the ballpark figure a sale might procure for his client, PKC.

“We’re not quoting a price as there are so many usages for a building like this, and there is a different value for retail or residential,” he said.

The company was also handling the sale of PKC’s former Hill Primary School in Blairgowrie and Kinross High School, but it is understood potential buyers are not exactly beating a path to either’s door.

While the 7.2 acre education site in Kinross – boarded up and a magnet for vandals who torched part of the building last year – was previously under offer, the buyer – Sainsbury’s – eventually walked away.

More recently, in August, a PKC committee agreed to place the former Cherrybank Primary and Special School buildings on the open market.

The council made the move after abandoning its own tentative plans to re-use the 0.3-hectare site – which is accessed from both Glasgow Road and Viewlands Terrace – or to construct affordable housing.