The Banks O’ Dee care home closed its doors four years ago after inspectors blasted the “urine-soaked” Aberdeen facility.
Since then, the Tullos building has lain boarded up and empty.
Now, housing association Hillcrest Homes wants to turn it into 24 affordable flats.
The firm says the move would “offset a current shortage of social housing in Aberdeen, while providing a new use for a building that has remained vacant”.
What happened to Banks O’Dee care home?
Inspectors savaged the Abbotswell Road facility in 2019, saying residents were left in bed for up to 15 hours a day while going outside to smoke was the only exercise many got.
Others, they reported, were seen wandering the halls “aimlessly” as they were being given no stimulation.
The home was ordered to make “significant” improvements – including removing the “strong smell of urine”.
That February operator Four Seasons pulled out, and the venue closed for the final time in June 2019.
What are the new plans for the building?
Papers sent to Aberdeen City Council by Bradley Craig Architects explain that “various parts” of the site have fallen into disrepair.
They add: “A conversion into social housing will prevent the building from becoming a derelict unit, on a desirable and spacious site that faces the River Dee.”
To complete the transformation, new windows and cladding will need to be installed.
Despite this, they say that, if approved, it could be opened within a “rapid timescale”.
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And it would also help “meet an urgent requirement for wheelchair accessible accommodation”.
Hillcrest Housing is also behind affordable flats at a former city centre cinema and office complex.
You can see the Banks O’Dee care home plans here.
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