A family campaigning to get Perth and Kinross Council (PKC) to hear the case for their restaurant-on-a-train idea have secured a meeting time in the New Year.
Speaking for his family, Fergus McCallum said yesterday: “This is our last hope. We hope the council will listen to us - with an open mind.”
The vision to open The Wee Choo-Choo Thai restaurant using two converted railway carriages began last January, was given planning consent in April but hit the buffers when, in June, councillors declined to lease a site for it.
Twelve spaces were required in Pitlochry ’s Rie-Achan Car Park, property of PKC.
The Wee Choo-Choo has some objectors but the majority of people backed the entrepreneur spirit of the three members of the McCallum family, Fergus, his Thai wife Isara and teenage daughter Mia.
While the planning application was agreed, the lease of the parking spaces was declined and the project languished, failing to open in the profitable summer months.
When months passed without further movement from the council, the family had to accept they didn’t have the finances to wait any longer.
As a last ditch effort they started an online petition which gathered 1185 signatures in total. Then they reluctantly liquidated the company. They managed to save one key asset, the carriages, from the liquidation deal.
However, there has been a breakthrough this week. Perth and Kinross Council added the case of the Wee Choo-Choo restaurant location and declined site lease to the agenda for a property sub-committee to take place virtually on January 10.
Mr McCallum and his family will invite the committee to rehear the case, for the first time bringing in the voices of the 478 Perth and Kinross residents who signed the petition.
Among 1185 names, there were 307 signatures from all over the world including Europe, Australia, Canada and Asia, all pointing to the economic benefits of a new opening in Pitlochry and saying they’d welcome a new style of cooking in the Highland Perthshire tourist town.
A condition of the matter being heard by PKC later this month was that new information needed to be brought to the sub committee.
The McCallums argue that members of the property sub-committee need to be formally told that no parking spaces would be lost as the equivalent spaces - which they always intended to pay for - are to be found elsewhere in the town so there would be no net loss.
Mr McCallum asserts that he has prepared a transport audit that has not been seen by the committee and also an economic impact assessment that has not previously been seen by the committee.
