CAMPAIGNERS opposed to a nightclub under Glasgow's Botanic Gardens have vowed to take their fight to the top court.

By Calum MacDonald

CAMPAIGNERS opposed to a nightclub under Glasgow's Botanic Gardens have vowed to take their fight to the top court.

Leisure entrepreneur Stefan King's proposal for a multi-million pound development on the edge of the popular West End park has already been backed by councillors.

But a group was set up to fight the scheme at a public meeting last night and city lawyer David Howat said it would take the case all the way to the Court of Session.

Almost 300 people turned up for a joint meeting of Hillhead and Kelvinside community councils at Glasgow University to hear city parks boss Robert Booth reveal details of the £7m plan.

Mr Booth, executive director of land services, was heckled and shouted down as he tried to speak.

He said the restaurant, café/bar and nightclub would all lie within the "original footprint" of the old Botanics Rail Station and take up less than a half of 1% of the Gardens.

Campaigners say a nightclub would destroy the Gardens' character.

Announcing the creation of Save Our Botanics, Mr Howat said: "The sight of a socialist- controlled council using its political majority in the face of trenchant local opposition to force through a plan by a millionaire to commercially exploit a treasured public space is unedifying in the extreme.

"A decision by a Court of Session judge citing actions of the council to be illegal would send them hamewards tae think again."

Mr Howat said his firm, Pattison and Sim, was working on the case and advice was being taken from a top advocate.

Any legal challenge will centre on "procedural irregularities" in the decision-making process and the issue of "Common Good" land, he added.

A chest specialist at a West End hospital who lives near the Gardens said he is already wakened regularly by drunks spilling out of pubs on Byres Road and another nightclub would only make matters worse.

He asked Mr Booth: "What if it was your heart I had to work on after having only got a few hours sleep because of headbangers making noise outside my flat?"

The meeting also heard from Professor Keith Vickerman, chairman of Friends of the Botanic Gardens, who said the park was "more akin to a living museum than other parks" and that the miniature railway Mr King's G1 Group plans will cause "no end of trouble".

Pauline McNeill, the Labour MSP for Glasgow Kelvin, said the critics had made their point, "but the question is will we be listened to?"

Later Roger Downie, a professor of zoological education at Glasgow University said: "I don't think the people from the West End who came to the meeting were at all satisfied with the responses from the council."