Kenmore's Crossroads

Fury over a luxury redevelopment at the Perthshire village made news headlines around the world but is the tide of popular opinion turning?

- MORAG LINDSAY

IT'S a tale as old as time. David and Goliath with a dash of Local Hero. The Scots villagers standing up to American tycoons set on colonising their back yard.

Or so the more colourful headlines around the takeover of Taymouth Castle at Kenmore, beside Loch Tay, would have had you believe.

... Locals wage war against firm turning community into a luxury gated resort...

... "It is literally a ghost town": Locals fear Scottish village is becoming a "playground" for American billionaires...

... Idyllic Scottish village has become a "ghost town" just for the "rich", claim locals...

The truth? It's a bit more nuanced than that. But for a few months last summer this little lochside community was at the centre of a maelstrom.

On the one side is Discovery Land Company (DLC), an Arizona-based property developer fronted by entrepreneur - and tequila business partner of George Clooney - Mike Meldman, who bought the 19th century landmark and its equally dilapidated estate in 2019.

On the other, Protect Loch Tay; a grassroots protest group founded by a handful of Perthshire residents, whose online petition against DLC's activities suddenly went stratospheric in July 2023.

And in the middle? The couple of hundred or so residents of Kenmore, who had been peacefully co-existing with their new neighbours for four years by that point, and who suddenly found their "plight" topping news bulletins around the world.

News editors seized on the story with relish. Some reporters even visited Kenmore, broadcasting from the square in front of the closed village shop, the closed hotel and the empty houses, all now owned by DLC.

And on the face of it, it seemed horrific; the strangulation of a helpless community by "a group of American billionaires who specialise in gated 'worlds' for the super rich".