Ayr Station Hotel Fire 28/05/2023 and now on fire again 25/09/2023

[Dr_Paul]

I believe the technical term in Scotland is 'going on fire'. It happens in London too; a lot of old warehouses 'went on fire' in the riverside areas after the docks and many wharves shut down (very oddly, it stopped happening when developers discovered that old warehouses could be turned into flats and workshops and flogged for a small fortune). It happened to an old brewery where I live when I was a kid, a long time back.

 

[Ayrshire Roy]

The building might come down sooner rather than later.
Depending on it's structural condition, we are due gusts of 75mph tonight with Storm Agnes.

 

[Purple Train]

The building might come down sooner rather than later.
Depending on it's structural condition, we are due gusts of 75mph tonight with Storm Agnes.

I think you've got your comma and full stop muddled up, otherwise that is an extraordinary state of affairs!

Stupid question - is the building still burning?

 

[Ayrshire Roy]

I think you've got your comma and full stop muddled up, otherwise that is an extraordinary state of affairs!

Stupid question - is the building still burning?

I should of read that before posting

I know fire crews were there yesterday but we had a load of very heavy rain last night and again today.
With a building that big I wouldn't be surprised if it's still smouldering somewhere.

 

[380101]

I think you've got your comma and full stop muddled up, otherwise that is an extraordinary state of affairs!

Stupid question - is the building still burning?

Fire crews still there this afternoon damping down inside. Pump appliances sitting at both sides of the complex.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 28 Sep 2023 ==

Police and Fire Brigade are handing over control of the Station Hotel complex to South Ayrshire Council this afternoon. Building inspectors will be starting structural inspections to determine a plan of action.

Ironically, they are also errecting Herras fencing around the whole station/hotel area and bringing in 24hr security! Shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted!

 

[High Dyke]

For those not familiar, along with many small towns, it is fair to say Ayr has a struggling retail centre, with a lot of large retailers closing through the transition to out of town outlets / the transition to online / COVID / the closure of several large retailers .... the last Wilko store I set foot in .....

The railway is one of the great assets, with a pretty good service to Glasgow and then beyond, but for a long time passengers have been diverted through a funny side gate around the back of a clearly insecure building behind Heras fencing, and the fenced off areas looming large over the station.

It is the opitome of failed planning and poor local government, along with the poor governance of the railway, that such a building was not seized and either demolished in a controlled way, to give a new gateway to the town, or to find alternative use and constructive purpose for such a key building within the town.

As no such action was taken over several years, all that has happened was somewhat inevitable.

Well said. The wife and I were there during the summer, having time between trains. We had a walk round the town centre, which seems to be like many others these days.

It was also sad to see the state of the building, at that time.

 

[a_c_skinner]

Surely it has to be demolished now?

 

[Buzby]

They’ll need to pay a settlement to the scaffolding company for all that buckled protection. Although they’ve actually probably paid for it several times over.

 

[joncombe]

Easy to say with hindsight of course but given the hotel is an integral part of the station and included the ticket office, it seems an odd decision for the rail authorities to not retain ownership of the building. I would have thought owning the building but leasing it to the hotel owners might have made more sense. I suppose it would be an expensive building to maintain whoever owns it of course so perhaps that's why it was sold, but given the current problems that was probably bad idea. I assume given the ticket office was in it there must have been some sort of agreement with the owners?

 

[zwk500]

Easy to say with hindsight of course but given the hotel is an integral part of the station and included the ticket office, it seems an odd decision for the rail authorities to not retain ownership of the building. I would have thought owning the building but leasing it to the hotel owners might have made more sense. I suppose it would be an expensive building to maintain whoever owns it of course so perhaps that's why it was sold, but given the current problems that was probably bad idea. I assume given the ticket office was in it there must have been some sort of agreement with the owners?

A number of factors would come into it - among them being a desire to reduce the size of the railway estate, the desire to release property to private owners, the desire to reduce the railway's liabilities in the face of declining rail-hotel travel with faster services/competition and also the potential wishes of whoever was taking the business on from the railway.
It would have been very attractive to everybody to sell the hotel off and then lease the ground floor space for the ticket office back off the new owners, especially for a franchised model.

 

[Buzby]

Well, wasn’t it owned by BTH with Booking Office/toilets etc having primacy of tenure for operational reasons. This was around the time nobody cared and portacabin-style structures were cheap and cheerful and meant maintenance costs were slashed. I’m still surprised that Helensburgh (Lower) buildings still exists as that would also have been a prime candidate for ‘modernisation’.

 

[jagardner1984]

Easy to say with hindsight of course but given the hotel is an integral part of the station and included the ticket office, it seems an odd decision for the rail authorities to not retain ownership of the building. I would have thought owning the building but leasing it to the hotel owners might have made more sense. I suppose it would be an expensive building to maintain whoever owns it of course so perhaps that's why it was sold, but given the current problems that was probably bad idea. I assume given the ticket office was in it there must have been some sort of agreement with the owners?

Does seem odd however as you say that such a situation was ever allowed to come to pass - if for example i wanted to install a bridge over the OLE on the approach to Central station, build a little bungalow over it, maybe a little wooden fence and invite my friends over for a barbeque in my garden, perhaps have a little bonfire to keep warm, maybe not bother too much with locking the gate when I went out to work, my application would be correctly laughed at. And yet a similarly ludicrous situation was effectively allowed to come to pass - I think people are reading the news reports/disruption reports as "building next to station" - to all intents and purposes this building was part of the station. It was literally on the platform metres from the OLE and running lines, and you previously walked through it in order to purchase a ticket, the station canopy connected directly to it. It is quite staggering the railway had so little control of it, and it is really something of a fortunate miracle that no-one was hurt. One would hope similar structures across the network will have the legal implications assessed as to how they be checked and made safe.

 

[380101]

Easy to say with hindsight of course but given the hotel is an integral part of the station and included the ticket office, it seems an odd decision for the rail authorities to not retain ownership of the building. I would have thought owning the building but leasing it to the hotel owners might have made more sense. I suppose it would be an expensive building to maintain whoever owns it of course so perhaps that's why it was sold, but given the current problems that was probably bad idea. I assume given the ticket office was in it there must have been some sort of agreement with the owners?

Network Rail own the ground floor of the north wing. This contains the booking office, sundries office, public toilets, traincrew book on area, NR ops office, driver and traincrew managers offices, traincrew and station staff bothy areas plus the covered concourse area.

 

[gingerheid]

Are there any times for the rail replacement buses from Girvan available?
It really is a remarkable situation, perhaps most surprising that someone bought the building and didn't do anything at all with it. I get that the Ayr of today isn't the Ayr of 20 or so years ago that I have pleasant memories of, but it seems like it would have been a very valuable building as flats or student accommodation etc.

 

[Blindtraveler]

Couple of questions from me. I've not been two or through air by train for some years, did one of the previous files make the existing booking office unusable and therefore either resulted in closure or a temporary structure in a building or heaven forbid a porter cabin elsewhere on the land? And if not I assume that all that is now left of the booking office is a heap of chard remains and rubble? Also, how long can the 156 units trapped south of air keep going, I assume they can be fueled but what about toilet emptying and service and maintenance of the units?

 

[Crossover]

Couple of questions from me. I've not been two or through air by train for some years, did one of the previous files make the existing booking office unusable and therefore either resulted in closure or a temporary structure in a building or heaven forbid a porter cabin elsewhere on the land? And if not I assume that all that is now left of the booking office is a heap of chard remains and rubble? Also, how long can the 156 units trapped south of air keep going, I assume they can be fueled but what about toilet emptying and service and maintenance of the units?

I believe the railway facilities in the hotel structure have been closed for some time, predating the fires and possibly going back to when the building became unstable

 

[380101]

I believe the railway facilities in the hotel structure have been closed for some time, predating the fires and possibly going back to when the building became unstable

Railway facilities have been closed since the end of June 2018.

 

[farci]

'...You may have noticed that I wrote a piece about Ayr Station Hotel on Monday morning and, to be honest, I didn’t expect to be writing about it again so soon. But, as we all saw from the vivid pictures in The Herald, by the Monday afternoon the hotel was up in flames (again) and so here we are: concerned, angry, trying not to say I-told-you-so but mainly more determined than ever to do something about it...'

As a mere passenger in Strathclyde, I tend to agree with Mark Smith's article. Is it conspiracy?
https://www.heraldscotland.com/poli...=ceb952422e91eff760d85dff4e396290&date=290923

Any thoughts from insiders welcomed

 

[CharlieSpotted]

I really, really hope that following the Crooked House debacle there is indeed a change and the trend of "inconvenient" historic buildings "going on fire" can be halted. I'm willing to bet that everyone has an example of this happening in a historic, vacant building in their local area that has mysteriously gone up in flames and everyone knows why but nothing can be done. It's time to change that.

 

[farci]

I really, really hope that following the Crooked House debacle there is indeed a change and the trend of "inconvenient" historic buildings "going on fire" can be halted. I'm willing to bet that everyone has an example of this happening in a historic, vacant building in their local area that has mysteriously gone up in flames and everyone knows why but nothing can be done. It's time to change that.

The Glasgow area is notorious for unexplained fires or careless renovations where the keystone is removed (whoops - sorry!). What is Network Rail's record on such things? As a statutory undertaking they don't listen to communities in my experience

 

[DarloRich]

An article which seems to focus on a silly suggested conspiracy by public bodies to destroy a building rather than looking at the fact that the building is owned by a mysterious off shore party who has invested absolutely bot all in looking after the fabric and structure of the building and securing it from "becoming on fire". It is in now in such a state that pulling it down, whilst terribly sad, seems sensible. The land can then be used for something that, you know, benefits the people of Ayr!

BTW , a direct quote from the article: "Mr Ramsay admits the evidence he has is circumstantial"........

( I don't know the legal position of "neglected" buildings in Scotland so cant comment on the options available to interested parties to this point - rebuilding or pulling down is going to cost a fortune in any event)

 

[SuspectUsual]

I'm willing to bet that everyone has an example of this happening in a historic, vacant building in their local area that has mysteriously gone up in flames

Oh yes. The Walkley Clogs building between Hebden Bridge and Mytholmroyd. Fell into disuse, planning permission refused for conversion to apartments, mysterious fire not long later, building demolished almost immediately (unfortunately rightly as the walls were unstable and it was right next to the main road), planning permission granted for townhouses not long after

Such a coincidence

 

[DarloRich]

Oh yes. The Walkley Clogs building between Hebden Bridge and Mytholmroyd. Fell into disuse, planning permission refused for conversion to apartments, mysterious fire not long later, building demolished almost immediately (unfortunately rightly as the walls were unstable and it was right next to the main road), planning permission granted for townhouses not long after

Such a coincidence

i guess the test here is if the mysterious owner appears with redevelopment plans after the latest fire!

 

[Parjon]

A law change in which derelict private property which is destroyed in suspicious fires, or other unlawful ways, automatically becomes the property of the state along with the land it sits on.

 

[DarloRich]

A law change in which derelict private property which is destroyed in suspicious fires becomes the property of the state.

all that does is transfer the cost of making safe a dangerous building to the state. Ok - there might be developmental possibilities in the future but the costs associated with making safe the building in question will be huge.

 

[Parjon]

all that does is transfer the cost of making safe a dangerous building to the state. Ok - there might be developmental possibilities in the future but the costs associated with making safe the building in question will be huge.

If all was left to demolish a fire ravaged building, actually it would result in a tidy sum for the new landowner in sale.

Why on earth do you think so many troublesome properties "catch light"? Spontaneous combustion??

Eliminate the opportunity, eliminate the event.

But it wouldn't be any such risk, as the number of fires would plummet.

 

[DarloRich]

If all was left to demolish, actually it would result in a tidy sum for the new landowner in sale.

C£9m suggested to demolish the Ayr site. That is a lot of tax payers money to have to find in times of such tight spending.

Eliminate the profit, eliminate the event.

I agree - however you are adding to the costs of the state before realising any profit.

 

[CaptainHaddock]

Oh yes. The Walkley Clogs building between Hebden Bridge and Mytholmroyd. Fell into disuse, planning permission refused for conversion to apartments, mysterious fire not long later, building demolished almost immediately (unfortunately rightly as the walls were unstable and it was right next to the main road), planning permission granted for townhouses not long after

Such a coincidence

Here in South Yorkshire the former owner of Doncaster Rovers was found guilty of arson for trying to burn down their old ground to force a move to a new one.

Ex-owner of Doncaster Rovers jailed for arson plot

THE FORMER owner of Doncaster Rovers Football Club was jailed for four years yesterday after plotting to burn down the main stand of the club's home ground.

www.independent.co.uk

 

[DarloRich]

Here in South Yorkshire the former owner of Doncaster Rovers was found guilty of arson for trying to burn down their old ground to force a move to a new one.

is that the one with the EX SAS man who left his phone with the a message saying, essentially, I have burnt it down for you, in the smouldering remains of the stand?

 

[CaptainHaddock]

is that the one with the EX SAS man who left his phone with the a message saying, essentially, I have burnt it down for you, in the smouldering remains of the stand?

Yes, that's the one!