Historic Buildings

KLM Partnership initially provided Cost Consultancy Services for the proposed development, and are currently providing CDM Adviser to PD Services.

The Wasps Trust is creating a £5million studio at the Grade B-listed Midmills Campus.

The buildings, in the Crown area, housed Inverness Royal Academy from 1895 to 1979, before becoming a campus for Inverness College UHI.

The buildings have been vacant since the college moved to its base at Beechwood in the summer of 2015, with councillors backing a plan to transform the site in August 2016.

The Wasps Trust, a non-profit social enterprise based in Glasgow, will convert the main buildings into 39 artist studios and 50 desk spaces for creative businesses.

A design team has now been appointed by the trust. It includes LDN Architects, Forres, David Narro Assocs Civil and Structural Engineers, Forres, Irons Foulner Partnership Building Service Engineers and KLM Partnership, Inverness.

Audrey Carlin, senior executive director of Wasps, said: “This is an exciting project for Wasps, and will be our largest in the Highlands, following completion of smaller Wasps studio projects in Nairn, Orkney and Skye in the past 18 months.

“We are working with a steering group of locally based artists and makers to help us develop the project.

The facility will provide studios for artists, creative workshops, offices for cultural organisations and social enterprises, studios for creative industries, a cafe, exhibition space, performance workshop, maker space and cinema.

It will also meet needs identified by HIE and the University of the Highlands and Islands, including graduate support initiatives, low-cost shared studios, incubator space, business support and mentoring, music rehearsal and community workshops, as well as space for supported creative industries.

It is scheduled for completion in 2019.