New £15M Tesco store recommended for go-ahead
Plans for a new £15 million supermarket expected to create more than 150 new jobs are being recommended to get the go-ahead.
The long-delayed application will finally go before members of the Cairngorms National Park’s planning committee at their meeting in Aviemore this Friday.
The new 45,000 square feet store is three times larger than the current village centre premises which the company says is too small to cope with customer numbers and demand at peak holiday times.
Mr Doug Wilson, corporate affairs manager for Tesco, told the Strathy: "We are delighted with the positive feedback we have received from the local community regarding our proposals for Aviemore.
"It is clear that residents have recognised the benefits our plans will bring to the area, including providing improved availability and choice of products and encouraging people to undertake more shopping locally.
"We have worked actively with the key stakeholders and the community to ensure that our plans meet local aspirations and we hope that the positive aspects of our proposals are recognised at the committee on Friday."
The plans for a new supermarket at Myrtlefield just off Grampian Road will provide 30,000 square feet of sales area.
Members of the planning committee meeting at the Cairngorm Hotel are being recommended by their planning officials to approve the development subject to conditions.
Park planning officer Andrew Tait said: "The CNPA has been supportive of a larger supermarket for people in and around Aviemore for some time and granted outline planning permission to Tesco to build one in 2008.
"The new application we received last summer raised a range of issues concerning roads, parking, ecology, drainage and design and we and Tesco have been working extremely hard to address these.
"We consider the application to be of a high standard which will enhance the streetscape of Aviemore and are recommending the planning committee approve it."
The recommendation for approval is subject to the Scottish Environment Protection Agency withdrawing its objection regarding potential flood risk; planning contributions; information on pollution prevention and a range of planning conditions.
Tesco’s plans still involve infilling a pond which formed part of the Aviemore Centre’s Santa Claus Land and is home to the rare Northern Damselfly.
A call has been made by one group of conservationists for the planning paper for Friday’s meeting to be withdrawn on the grounds that it is legally flawed because of the plans to relocate the species.
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A spokesperson for the Badenoch and Strathspey Conservation Group said: "The condition the CNPA planners have put forward for the translocation of Britain’s scarcest damselfly and other species fails to meet national standards and ignores the advice of the park authority’s own specialist.
"The translocation has to be demonstrated to be successful before the donor pond is destroyed and made into the Tesco car park.
"It is self evident that the existing donor lochan on the site must be safeguarded until several generations of the rarest species such as the Northern Damselfly have been proved to have successfully bred at any new pond."
The staff at the current store will be transferred if and when the new store opens, with the new jobs figure being created on top of that.
The store has been designed with a heavily glazed, south facing frontage with a timber raised canopy.
Outline planning permission for the new supermarket at Myrtlefield has existed since 2008. But in June 2010, Tesco chose to submit a completely new application, with the store in a different position on the site, effectively putting aside the outline permission which was granted two years earlier.
The plan included a proposal to in-fill the lochan to create car parking and so the store could have a more conventional outlook.