End of an eyesore: Derelict Aberdeen community centre finally demolished… 25 YEARS after its closure

Leadside Hall in Rosemount is to make way for flats, with work eventually under way to clear the site a decade after plans were approved.

By Alastair Gossip

May 3 2023, 5:00 pm

Work has started on the demolition of the community centre in Aberdeen's Leadside Road.

The wrecking ball has finally met an Aberdeen eyesore – more than a decade after flats plans for the site were first approved.

Leadside Community Centre was closed as part of brutal cuts on what we described as the council’s “blackest day” in 1998.

It has lain empty since, though Forbes Homes gained planning permission to build 11 flats on the site in 2012.

The building was in a poor way when this picture was taken in 2006. Image: DC Thomson

Leadside Community Centre in Aberdeen sat boarded up for more than two decades. Image: Kath Flannery/DC Thomson, 2012.

Work on knocking down the old hall, last used by the council to store wheelie bins, is now taking place.

Specialists were brought in by the developer to remove asbestos from the Leadside Road building, opened in 1957.

Demolition long time coming for Aberdeen community centre

The work comes just weeks after the council voted to mothball six public libraries and Bucksburn Swimming Pool in a savings drive reminiscent of that 25 years ago.

The Beach Leisure Centre, a victim of the same budget, is soon to be demolished.

Previously Leadside Hall, the Rosemount building became a community centre in 1988.

But within months, those running the new venture were taking to the pages of the Evening Express urging the public to make use of it.

The Evening Express championed use of Leadside Community Centre in Aberdeen after a slow start. Image: British Newspaper Archives.

Deryck Forbes, director of the family-run Maryculter housing firm behind the project, said the building had already been falling down.

“This work is to make the site safe,” he told The P&J.

“This was something we had to do to get it cleaned up, and the bad materials removed.”

Plans for 11 flats were approved for the Leadside Road site in 2012 - and again in 2019. Image: Forbes Homes/Aberdeen City Council. — Plans for 11 flats were approved for the Leadside Road site in 2012 – and again in 2019. Image: Forbes Homes/Aberdeen City Council.

Planning permission for 11 flats and the demolition of the boarded up, overgrown, community hall was granted in 2012.

It was renewed conditionally seven years later.

City planners confirmed Forbes Homes had met all the prerequisites to begin demolition this March.

Leadside Hall, an Aberdeen community centre which was closed in a "butchering" of council budgets in 1998, is finally being demolished. Image: Alastair Gossip/DC Thomson. — Leadside Hall, an Aberdeen community centre which was closed in a “butchering” of council budgets in 1998, is finally being demolished. Image: Alastair Gossip/DC Thomson.

The building was more than 60 years old. Image: Alastair Gossip/DC Thomson

Eyesore Leadside Community Centre had ‘more trees on its roof than a park’

While the community centre will be levelled by the week’s end, the workshop next door – which is also part of the development site – is still being leased out.

Construction work is not expected to begin quickly as a result, with tenants still in place.

Local councillor Bill Cormie gazes on as the piece of local history is reduced to rubble. Image: Alastair Gossip/DC Thomson.

Midstocket and Rosemount councillor Bill Cormie lamented what had become of the once “well-used” hall.

He said: “One family, the Benzies from Esslemont Avenue, used to serve lovely, wholesome food in there and a lot of families from Rosemount Square used it on a daily basis.

“Sadly, it became a place for antisocial behaviour gatherings and graffiti.

“It has been an eyesore for many years. There were as many trees growing on its roof as there are in Victoria Park.

“I hope new life can be breathed into the site.”

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