The results of the public vote on Sir Ian Wood’s £140million city square project will not be announced until April 13 – two weeks after the funding deadline for Peacock Visual Arts’ new centre in Union Terrace Gardens.
Leaders of the city square bid said 10,000 people had responded to the eight-week consultation, meaning a huge amount of work would be required to analyse the feedback.
Peacock, which called a halt to its £13.5million scheme after the Wood Group chairman announced his plan for a five-acre civic square on the site of the gardens, the Denburn dual-carriageway and the railway, said it was disappointed the results would not be known for another five weeks.
The arts group’s deadline for taking up a linchpin £4.3million grant from the Scottish Arts Council (SAC) runs out at the end of March. It had already been extended to allow the consultation to take place. Last night, SAC said it would review its position at the end of March.
Aberdeen City and Shire Economic Future (Acsef), the group steering the city square bid on Sir Ian’s behalf, said the sheer weight of feedback meant it would be unable to announce the outcome until April 13.
Acsef chairman Tom Smith said: “A huge amount of work is now under way to analyse the quantitative and qualitative data collected over the last eight weeks.
“To put the scale of this task into perspective, the consultation report on Edinburgh trams took 12 weeks to compile based on feedback from 3,500 people. There has been three times that amount of input from the public for the city square project.
“When Acsef partners have had time to consider the opinions of those who got involved in the consultation a decision will be made as to whether we take our ambitions for the future of Aberdeen city centre forward.”
Since announcing he was prepared to put £50million of his own money into a redevelopment of Union Terrace Gardens and the Denburn valley in November 2008, Sir Ian has stressed he would only press ahead if it could be shown that the people of Aberdeen wanted the city square.
Acsef said last week there was a danger of the bid crumbling due to “apathy” because fewer than 3% of the population had taken part in the consultation. It also warned the city could be left with nothing because there were no guarantees that Peacock would be able to secure the remainder of its funding.
Peacock campaign director Elly Rothnie said: “While we are delighted that 10,000 people have taken part in the consultation and understand it will take some time to analyse their responses, we are disappointed to learn that the results will not now be available until April.
“We had been assured that the results would be released in time for the March review of our funding by the Scottish Arts Council. I think everyone will be hoping now that the results can be issued as soon as possible to bring some much-needed clarity on the way forward for the city.”
SAC co-director of arts Iain Munro said: “This is new information we have just been made aware of and, as such, we will consider it alongside any other relevant factors when we review our position at the end of March.”
The Scottish Government has said it would be keen to see an arts centre in Aberdeen, either within the city square or on its own, and has suggested the city square could qualify for funding if the two groups were able to reach a compromise.
Last night, a spokesman said ministers were awaiting the outcome of the consultation with interest.
An online petition in support of the city square gathered about 1,500 signatures by the time the consultation closed on Friday, while another in favour of the Peacock centre in Union Terrace Gardens was signed by about 8,500 people.