A scheme to construct an indoor hall looks like being derailed by the refusal of Dunkeld and Birnam Recreation Club to sell a parcel of land.
A recent meeting of the club voted to stop plans to build on the land targeted for the hall and prevent its sale.
A total of £100,000 has been raised by Dunkeld and Birnam Leisure Group to fund its proposal, but members were left stunned by the recent turn of events.
Leisure group chairman Kevin Lancaster said: ”We have heard murmurings over the past year to 18 months from the recreation club that there were people unhappy over our plans because they felt the sports hall wouldn’t be viable. But, rather than speak to us about it, it got to this stage.
”This all went against the very positive talks we had with the club prior to that.”
The recreation club consists of a bowling club and tennis club and has owned the land adjacent to its premises since 1979. Chairman Robert Preston said: ”The land here is among a set of options the leisure group has been looking at.
”We offered them a piece of unused ground and I understand there was talk over a section of a Church of Scotland-owned football ground.”
He denied there had been anything underhand in the way the decision was taken but tennis club member Helen Taylor said she was ”completely horrified”.
She said: ”The entire meeting had been planned in advance to ensure that the plan to build a sports centre on land owned by the recreation club was dead in the water.
”Thanks to the mean spiritedness and petty politicking of certain members ” it looks as if there may never be an indoor sports centre in Dunkeld and Birnam. I thought we lived in a community that cared about each other.”
Councillor Alasdair Wylie said: ”I am very disappointed indeed that such a short-sighted and negative move should put so much hard work and such evident potential community benefit at risk.
”I do hope that the club membership will think again and I will do everything I can to continue to support the progress of the sports centre project.
”For a charity which only exists as one senior member pointed out more than once because it was provided with ground for a nominal sum by Atholl Estates over 30 years ago for the purpose of sport and recreation in the community, this is behaviour which the community at large will just not understand.”
The news is a setback for a project that has been in the planning stage since 1998 when the ”pioneering approach” of Dunkeld and Birnam Leisure Group was praised by Perth and Kinross Council. At that time the proposed site for the development was zoned in the draft Highland Perthshire local area plan.
Despite gaining outline planning permission, it ran into opposition with the recreation club concerned it would mean a loss of parking space for its members.