Offers over £500,000 sought for former North Lands Creative base
Lybster's former creative glass studio is on the market for offers over £500,000.
Prospective buyers are being told the Main Street complex is a mixed-use property with development potential on the North Coast 500 tourist route.
It was previously the base for North Lands Creative, which closed during the summer when six employees were made redundant.
The property is being marketed by Shepherd Chartered Surveyors and consists of three refurbished buildings spread across 7345 sq ft, providing workshop, studio and residential accommodation on a one-acre site.
The Alastair Pilkington Studio has been configured to provide four workshops, office accommodation, toilets, café and prep kitchen, while the Old School House has been converted into a five-bedroom accommodation block with laundry quarters and a lean-to single-storey extension.
The timber-frame lodge, meanwhile, has been configured to provide an open-plan living room/kitchenette, three-double bedrooms, a shower room and a disabled wet room with a paddock to the rear.
Rory Fraser, from the Inverness office of Shepherd Chartered Surveyors, said: “Previously operated by North Lands Creative as a contemporary glass production facility with living accommodation, there are various avenues that new owners could explore to enhance the existing business, including development potential, subject to appropriate planning consents.
“The North Coast 500 is deemed one of the world’s most beautiful road trips and, as such, we anticipate much interest in this mixed-use property with development potential.”
Interested parties are asked to contact the sole selling agent on 01463 712239, with offers over £500,000 invited.
The three full-time and three part-time staff were told at the end of July that North Lands Creative had ceased trading. Joint provisional liquidators were appointed in August.
The specialist glass studio was established in Lybster in 1995 to stimulate interest in the possibilities of glass as an art form and provide cultural activities for the community.
Its vision was to be an international centre of excellence in glass-making.
In a statement on its website on July 12, announcing a decision to "pause" its summer programme and cancel professional classes, North Lands Creative wrote: "Like many organisations, North Lands Creative has faced some significant challenges in the last few years. The ripple effects of the pandemic, recruitment challenges (particularly in a rural area), the energy crisis and the subsequent funding crisis have created a creeping, negative toll on our programming and, most importantly, on the wellbeing of our people."
