River, whose reptile rescue occupies two large studios, is one of the more unusual tenants.<\/p>\n
He says his “fascination with reptiles and exotic things” began as a child in the Netherlands.<\/p>\n
He moved to the UK at the age of 11 and, after a spell as the singer in a boyband, found himself homeless.<\/p>\n
After getting back on his feet, he began taking in animals that friends and acquaintances could no longer look after.<\/p>\n
“It quickly grew into a big passion and I realised there was a need for someone to take in reptiles in Scotland,” he says.<\/p>\n
His rescue centre has grown significantly in the years since and he says St Margaret’s House is an “incredible” place to be.<\/p>\n
“The community here is just phenomenal, everyone supports each other,” he says.<\/p>\n
The news of the building’s sale has been difficult for all the tenants, some of whom have been there for 18 years, he says.<\/p>\n
“Everyone is trying to help each other through, but it’s really put stress on us all,” River says.<\/p>\n
The Scot-ART tenants were informed on 28 September that they had to vacate the building by 24 January.<\/p>\n
Building owners Caledonian Trust told the BBC they had “fully communicated” that St Margaret’s House had been on the market for some time. <\/p>\n
“We’re in discussions with a preferred party, but the process isn’t finished and it would be inappropriate to provide any more detail,” a statement said.<\/p>\n
The owners said Scot-Art had leased the building for many years on “generous terms” and they had been proud to support independent artists and freelancers.<\/p>\n
However, they said that the building no longer met the standards needed for its long-term future.<\/p>\n
Scot-ART said they were “incredibly proud ” of what they had achieved by supporting diverse grassroots and creative arts organisations over the past 20 years.<\/p>\n
It said was working hard behind the scenes to build a more resilient and long-term future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"River, whose reptile rescue occupies two large studios, is one of the more unusual tenants. He says his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":812075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-812074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=812074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}