£100k price tag of Annan study

Annan High Street Project is currently in development and will soon appoint an experienced urban design consultancy to launch a consultation aimed at making ‘enhancements’, along with a car parking survey.
Previous design ideas for the High Street have included a vision in which the war memorial was moved to create a square, but CX Project officer Steve Szostak said: “What we don’t want to be is be prescriptive.
“So the £100,000 that’s been ring-fenced — the first chunk of that will be about hiring the consultancy who’re good at this sort of thing who will start to talk to the businesses and the community about what the town should start to look like.
“We’ve got to engage with people first.”
An invitation for design consultancy firms to bid for the project had been due to go out in recent weeks.
However, it was delayed while consultation was carried out over changes on or around Annan High Street which are now being implemented in six weeks of work.
Mr Szostak explained the delay allowed any relevant feedback to be considered before the brief for the wider consultation was published.
That brief will also invite tenderers to consider treatments of two other gateways into town — from Tesco and the B721/B6357 and past Galabank on the Annan to Eaglesfield road.
Consideration will also be given to improvements or development of the council’s Stapleton Road depot site.
The depot is currently earmarked for demolition and redevelopment for business use.
And Annandale South councillor Sean Marshall said: “We’re talking to one business which could maybe be potentially relocated to the Stapleton Depot.”