A new campsite could open in a once-neglected Fife park as early as this spring, it has been revealed.
The team behind the ambitious transformation of Silverburn Park in Leven, are investing £100,000 in camping pods as well as a toilet and shower block.
It will include CCTV and Wi-Fi and marks a major step forward for Fife Employment Access Trust (FEAT), which is leading the park’s restoration.
The group had initially hoped to have the park up and running by Easter but problems with drainage have now made that unlikely.
FEAT chairman Brian Robertson said the campsite is just one of a number of projects designed to attract more people to Silverburn.
It will sit alongside an area of community allotments, where work has already begun.
“Internal tracks and fences are in place and plots are being marked out,” he said.
“There will be 25 allotments with sheds and a communal polytunnel.
“There’s already significant interest in forming a management committee.”
The FEAT team includes a group of previously long-term unemployed workers who are receiving training to help them find permanent work.
Longer term ambitions include bringing the dilapidated B-listed former flax mill back into use.
It will include a backpackers’ hostel in the hope walkers on the nearby coastal path will stop off there.
A business centre and café, an exhibition space, meeting rooms and workshop space are also on the cards.
Mr Robertson said FEAT would find out in March if a £1.5m funding bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund had been successful and, if so, the old mill would be ready for use by 2022.
A proper children’s play area is planned and funding is being applied for for a long-term woodland management plan and a path linking with the coastal path.
The 27-acre Silverburn estate was gifted to the town council by the Russell family in 1973.
It became neglected but it is widely thought that efforts to revitalise it would support the regeneration of Leven as a whole.
