A well-known Highland brewery has lodged plans to transform a historic Inverness city centre building into a new craft beer bar and restaurant.
Aviemore-based Cairngorm Brewery has applied for listed building consent for the project at the former AI Welders building at the north end of Academy Street.
The category B-listed site served as the offices for the Rose Street Foundry and Engineering Company, which once employed 300 people and latterly become AI Welders, until it left the city centre in 1988.
In recent years the ground floor has been used for various bars, including Academy, Rock Garden, Lafferty’s, Shots and Deeno’s.
However, it has fallen into disrepair and is on Historic Environment Scotland’s “Building at risk” register.
Cairngorm Brewery bought the site in 2013 and has now lodged an application with Highland Council to create a new bar on the ground floor, with the first floor to be used as a restaurant.
Submitted documents state: “The building is generally in a state of disrepair caused by years of neglect and lack of maintenance and is in urgent need of remedial works to the roof, stonework and windows.”
Specialist studies found that four mosaics of foundry men at work in the building’s round head arches are “likely to be lost” unless action is taken soon to repair them.
The brewery’s proposal would reinstate the Academy Street and Rose Street elevations in a similar way to those which existed before World War I, as well as restoring and repairing the mosaics and roof.
A design statement said: “The current owner’s proposals for the refurbishment and revitalisation of the building are to create a flagship bar for their own trademark range of beers on the ground floor along with a coffee shop/pizza area.
“A new metal spiral stair will provide access to a restaurant on the first floor.”
The project follows the opening last year of Black Isle Brewery’s first craft beer bar on the city’s Church Street.
Mike Smith, chief executive of city centre organisation Inverness Bid, said: “I think it is good news. It’s excellent that there’s going to be a significant investment going into the building to take it back to its former glory.
“It’s great news that it’s going to be restored to such a high standard. It used to be one of the pubs everybody went to and that has changed in recent years.”
