Cuningar Loop wildlife attraction consultation staged
April 30 2013
The meet and greet session presages a formal planning application in the summer and saw locals invited to pass comment on tentative plans to erect a trio of giant ‘biospheres’ on the site, each housing a self-contained polar, temperate and tropical climate.
The tropical zone will house a bat cave, lazy river, waterfall and forest together with a high level tree walk whilst its polar neighbour contains an ice cave, ice bridge; providing a home from home for its blue whale krill, seal and penguin denizens.
Around this will be built an external park populated by antelope, black rhino, gorillas, lions and primates.
Doubling as a conservation centre and leisure destination the development would bring with it an associated 200 bed hotel and restaurants and is being billed as a legacy project for the Commonwealth Games, which will be centred on the athletes village linked by a pedestrian footbridge.
A design team for the project is already in place with Arup, MELT and MET Studio Design undertaking engineering, leisure and experiential design work respectively.
Sir Robert McAlpine has been chosen as lead constructor.
If public funding of £17m and planning approval is forthcoming the developers will ‘target’ a late autumn 2013 start for completion by spring 2015.
The Cuningar Loop is now a wilderness but was previously used as a dumping ground
Wildside claim to have brought on board several unnamed investors for their project
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4 Comments
#1 Posted by K-raj on 1 May 2013 at 15:02 PM
Pretty sceptical as to whether this will ever happen. That said, should it indeed occur, it is surely a good use of such land.
#2 Posted by Kevin Finlayson on 1 May 2013 at 15:04 PM
attending the drop in session. i give this project my full support being a resident of dalmarnock
#3 Posted by John on 5 May 2013 at 17:48 PM
Is it right to keep animals in captivity and in such a confined area. I'm certain it is wrong and they are better left in the wild to live free
#4 Posted by wonky on 6 May 2013 at 19:10 PM
And indeed it would be better if the world had no wars or crimes or pollution...but we don't live in an ideal world: Elephants, Rhinos, Tigers, Gorillas, Polar Bears and many others are all rapidly vanishing from the 'wild' and so zoo's offer an opportunity 1) educate the public 2) preserve species for the future 3) allow the opportunity for them to be released into the 'wild' when we humans eventually learn to live with nature 4) modern zoos very seldom have 'confined areas'...John I get where you're coming from but I think your opinion is a bit naive and over simplifying the subject.
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