In 1974, the County Council advertised a vacant site on Stonefield Road to be used for commercial purposes. Across from the Bing, on the site of former large tenements, the land was to be used to build new shops at Larkfield, recognising that previous shops had been demolished in the area.
Yaqub Ali was one businessman amongst others who put in a tender to buy the land outright, with intention of building new premises which he could lease out. Having the least expensive bid, his offer was then accepted by the Council in 1974, on the condition that Mr Ali achieved detailed planning permission.
Wasting no time, Mr Ali put his plans to the council and the offer to sell the land by the council was approved in May 1975, just before the County Council reorganisation to become Strathclyde Regional Council.
There then followed a confusing period where it was unknown who was dealing with matters before Mr Ali found that it was Hamilton District Council who were continuing to manage the site. Then things got even more complicated, when due to legislation associated with the reorganisation of the council, it was now much harder to sell off council land and Mr Ali in November 1975 received a letter saying the council would lease it to him instead of selling.
However, this wasn’t what was agreed, with Mr Ali insisting that his outright purchase of the land continued as had previously been agreed. He added, “We had agreed with the previous authority that we would be able to buy the site. I had told the council this and have it in writing.”
The confusion got more deep when the District Valuer sent Mr Ali a purchase AND a lease price in November 1975, all the time, the plans delayed for construction. Then in December 1976, the Council issued a letter confirming their final position would be they would only lease the site to Mr Ali.
By Summer 1977, Mr Ali was still battling with the council to get them to agree to the outright sale as originally planned, ignoring the letters which said they would lease. The Council’s position was that since re-organisation of local government came into play in 1975, the Community Land Act was now appropriate and they could not sell the land, even if they wanted to.
Mr Ali was angry and felt he had been unfairly treated, but recognised the new ACT was to blame, stating that government should be involved to get them to uphold previous agreements.
By the end of May 1977, shops built, Mr Ali was still not in a position of knowing the outcome and left in the awkward and potentially financially catastrophic position of having built his shops but not knowing if he even owned the land! In a statement to reporters on 26th May 1977 he said, “Until thats resolved, these new shops will remain closed.”
The Larkfield Shops are pictured in the 1980’s. If anybody knows the next part of this story and what happened next, please do let me know!
Wee sidenote, though Scotmid has been there for a long time, out of sheer habit, I still call this ‘Landmark’ to this day. Anybody else do that?
