Arts charity NVA wants to hold a design competition to revive the crumbling St Peter’s Seminary in Scotland after alternative plans to turn it into housing stalled.

The building, in Cardross near Loch Lomond, opened in 1966 and was designed by Isi Metzstein and Andy MacMillan while they were working for Gillespie, Kidd & Coia.

But the Grade A-listed building has been closed since the late 1980s and an initiative to revamp it by Urban Splash and Gareth Hoskins has been held up because of a £5 million funding shortfall.

This week Ken Crilly, the development director at owner, the Archdiocese of Glasgow, admitted to BD the Urban Splash proposal was close to defeat.

“It needs substantial public funding to make it financially stack up,” he said. “It’s not completely off the table but it’s looking highly unlikely. There is no infrastructure so it was always going to be a tall order.”

NVA director Angus Farquhar said it has secured private funding to allow it to press on with its plans which will be carried out over a 20 year period.

The Scottish government has asked NVA to exhibit its ideas – which include partially restoring St Peter’s while keeping the remainder as a live ruin – at the Venice Biennale later this month.

“We have the green light to work on this,” Farquhar added. “Venice is the formalisation of this being a nationally significant scheme.”

NVA hopes to hold the international competition in 2012 and long-term plans include setting up a free university at the site.