Portgordon community back development drive
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THE people of Portgordon turned out in force to back fledgling plans to revive the village.
Saturday saw a four-hour public session held in the village hall to gauge support and ideas for developing the outer harbour area as a way of breathing new life into Portgordon and providing a firm foundation for longer-term attempts to develop the harbour itself.
Led by Michelle Good from tsiMoray and Lucy Parsons, a marine consultant for harbour owners Crown Estates, the event followed on from a well-attended public meeting a few weeks ago which looked at driving both harbour redevelopment and also encouraging local groups to sign up for community umbrella group the Portgordon Alliance Group.
In a bid to identify the areas which need to be tackled, the discussion was based round four pillars – ecology, economy, social and culture.
The response from the community left both women impressed.
Ms Good said: "The people here today were unified in a common purpose, a love of their village and a desire to see it resurrected.
"It was really encouraging to see people standing up and pledging to do things, the community seems ready to pull together.
"There was a wide age range of people here today, which is a very good sign for the long-term future of this.
"I loved how there was a such a great vision for the future coming from people, there's a real desire to have a whole community approach."
Ms Parsons commented: "One of the things we were looking at was how the community can support the development of the harbour and what they ultimately want to do with it.
"One of the things we looked at was examine what had been done in similar communities elsewhere and map it out onto Portgordon to see what some of the possibilities are.
"It was great to see how people arrived with a very positive attitude to the whole thing. We've also had great support from the village hall here in running this event."
The next stage will be to call another meeting which will have the task of narrowing down which projects the community want to take forward. It is likely this will be held after four representatives from the village have attended a Plunkett Foundation information day in Edinburgh.
The foundation supports rural communities across the UK to tackle the issues they face through community business.
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