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News
Enterprising community reopens village shop
Minard in Argyll once again has a village shop after the community owned property opened for business on Sunday 5th March. Bill Middlemiss reports...
Following the announcement last July, that the previous shop, which had supplied the villagers' needs for over a century, was to close, the community decided that they still wanted a shop and set about acquiring one.
After considering various options, an ideal neighbouring property was offered to the community at valuation cost. Initial discussions with staff of the Scottish Land Fund were encouraging and a successful application for funding was made, which enabled the Community Trust to purchase the property.
An agreement was reached with the owner of Furnace Stores, Mike Masters, who expressed an interest in running the Minard shop along with his existing business, in an effort to make both more viable and to extend the range of products available to both communities.
The Trust has now leased the property to Mike to operate on behalf of the community. Funding for the conversion was secured from Argyll & the Islands Enterprise, The Scottish Community Foundation and the WHELK LEADER + programme and the work has now been very successfully completed by Cameron Construction, Ardrishaig.
The shop will also include Post Office services, which will be in place by the end of March. Since the previous shop closed in early October a team of volunteers have collected papers, milk, bread etc from the Furnace shop every day and distributed them from the sun porch of a neighbouring house, thus ensuring the continuity of service until the new facility was opened.
We now hope that this new shop will be well supported by the residents and visitors to Minard.
Related link
- Source
- Local Community Group
- Date
- 22-Mar-2006
- Categories
- COMMUNITIES, ENTERPRISE, Highlands and Islands, News - General