HELENSBURGH’S Community Hub will always be there for its residents as long as it has services operating from its building.

That was the pledge made by the venue’s newly-appointed operations manager as he addressed community chiefs on plans for the future.

Eddie Cusick told Argyll and Bute Council’s Helensburgh and Lomond community planning group of hopes to set up a community garden and café at the hub, in the town’s former Red Cross Hall.

The charitable trust in charge of the hub completed a community buy-out of the hall, on the corner of East Princes Street and Glenfinlas Street, from the charity in late 2020.

The British Red Cross had announced in May 2019 that it planned to close and sell the facility.

The charity is now one of several key community services using the hub, as Mr Cusick explained at the community planning group’s virtual meeting on Thursday, May 20.

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He said: “We lease out office space to community organisations providing key services, including Argyll and Bute Rape Crisis, Key Housing and the British Red Cross themselves.

“Money is generated from that and the income will sustain the hall for a long time. As long as we have tenants in, it will always be here for community use.

“We want to be operating seven days a week, for community groups, whether it is geographic community or gender community, we want people to come to us with ideas and we will support them as best we can.

“We want everything to be community-led.”

Mr Cusick added: “We will also carry out engagement exercises fairly soon. The hall space in the hub can be rented out to anybody – groups, voluntary groups, community groups or anybody meeting to see how they can get things off the ground.

“For community groups, the rental cost will be £10 an hour, for anything more commercial it will be £15 an hour. There is also an adapted kitchen space if they wish to use it for functions.

“We want to provide volunteering opportunities and have a good bit of land on the north side, on East Princes Street, which we want to turn into a small community garden.

“We also want to create a ‘conversation café’, so that people can just chat to others. Over the past year, that has been missing a lot – people want to talk to each other in as safe an environment as possible. There might be a few organisations who have looked at the hub and see it as somewhere to come on board in the future.”

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