Plans to turn Aberdeen’s derelict Budz Bar building into a four-storey venue could be waylaid by “stubborn” council officials.
Allan Smith and Bruce Porter have spent months clearing out the decaying Union Street site, preparing to launch a £2 million overhaul.
It lay vacant from 2007 until they took the keys last year.
Under their vision for the complex, it will have ultra modern crazy golf spread over two floors, a new cocktail bar where noughties hotspot Budz Bar once was and a restaurant.
The scheme has been hailed as a way of injecting new life into the struggling Granite Mile.
One key part of the proposal is cladding the crumbling rear exterior in corten steel, and using modern lighting effects to give it a dazzling makeover.
Allan claims that the “unsightly” brickwork is falling apart at the moment.
But project leaders fear this part of their scheme has caused a rift with Aberdeen City Council planning chiefs…
Why might Budz Bar plans be waylaid?
The snazzy vision for the venue, to be known as Glitch, prompted concerns from horrified historians when it was unveiled.
Allan told us that Tinto Architecture has since made repeated efforts to meet up with council planning chiefs to discuss this on their behalf.
It’s understood the pleas have fallen on deaf ears, and the team behind the new entertainment mecca have been braced for the Budz Bar lighting plans to be rejected.
Allan added: “We have spent months clearing the place out, it’s now fully stripped and we are ready to start as soon as we are given the go-ahead.
“We have cleared tonnes of debris. But to start, we need to know what we can proceed with and how.”
He added: “Aberdeen city centre needs investment, and it needs bold ideas, and that’s what we want to do.
“We just need permission to get started and it’s frustrating having to wait so long.
“It’s hard to understand why the council planning department won’t even meet to hear us out, it feels like they are just being stubborn and their mind is made up.
“We have asked if there are ways we can revise the design, but have been told no…”
What are the issues with the lighting plans?
It is expected the application will go to a vote in the coming weeks.
Aberdeen City Council refused to comment on the claims that officials have taken a dim view of the lighting plans.
But the issues raised by heritage buffs include the impact on Justice Mill Lane, with some claiming it looked like “the Las Vegas strip at night”.
The Aberdeen Civic Society wrote to the council to call for a “much more sympathetic” makeover.
They want something that is “better suited to a traditional granite building in the centre of Aberdeen”.
Another objector, David Lindsay, said the design “looked really bad”.
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‘The building is falling down as it is’
But the city entrepreneur behind the lighting proposal argues it is needed to brighten up what is now a rather dowdy building.
Allan stressed to us that the corten steel incorporated into the design will match with the Aberdeen letters in Union Terrace Gardens (which he designed) and other new sites in the city centre.
And he added: “The building is falling down, as it is. The cladding will protect it and preserve its future, as it will prevent the rain getting in.
“The lighting will be under our control, so it can be as bright or as faint as we choose. It is intended to be background lighting, and won’t dominate the building.
“You just need to look at the state of the building as it is…”
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