IF the bid by the management of the Kashmir Paradise Restaurant is successful it will indeed be the win-win situation that Peter Lockhart has talked about.

Having lost La Ducal already through the necessity to clear the businesses from the north end of High Street site to allow the Tesco Superstore plan to proceed, Cowdenbeath cannot afford to lose another restaurant.

But perhaps just as important is that a move for Denise Mahmood’s Kashmir Paradise would literally breathe new life into the sad Crown Hotel building.

Turning the former hotel into a restaurant at the north end of the High Street would be a very good move for this part of the town as a unit and would also ensure that the town has three restaurants, a necessity for a town of almost 11,000 people.

But it would also give the public hope of seeing the blight on the town’s landscape at last removed.

The burnt-out Crown is something which has stood dominating the northern entrance to the town for too long and to have someone who is keen to invest in it seems to be something which is too good to believe.

But that is the situation, but if the Mahmoods do not get the go-ahead to put their dream into action it will be literally a double blow for Cowdenbeath.