New proposals to reinvent Aberdeen city centre have been unveiled today as the council’s “masterplan” team embarks upon the next stage of public consultation this week.
Images have been released which show various areas of the heart of the Granite City re-imagined following an extensive consultation process to gauge what the people want to see.
The city council believes the plans could help deliver an additional 11,000 jobs and add £290 million to the city’s “gross annual income”.
Among the key themes are the transformation of the Queen Street area to create “Queen’s Square” – a new mixed use public area.
The Castlegate and Castlehill areas would also be “re-invigorated” as a new public square, while the Denburn Valley would undergo a major facelift as a residential area.
Union Street would be partially closed off to traffic, while there would be additional “green space” to the west of the thoroughfare with renovation work at Golden Square and Bon Accord Square.
Pedestrian links to Aberdeen railway station would be enhanced to improve visitors’ first impressions of the city.
A new walkway over the River Dee would be built connecting to a “residential community” at South Dee, while the North Dee area would be a business district.
Councillor Marie Boulton, who chairs the cross-party city centre regeneration working group, said: “We have a wonderful opportunity to deliver a lasting legacy for Aberdeen and its people. It’s terrific to see the public, the council and the business and educational communities working together to produce a plan to maintain our city’s rightful position as a leading world energy city.”
“The proposals are challenging, but the opportunity to transform our city centre for the better and ensure Aberdeen remains a busy, flourishing, cosmopolitan city which continues to experience strong growth and attract international business interest as well as increased tourism levels, simply cannot be missed.
“The public have played a very significant role throughout the consultation process in telling us what they wanted from their city and we believe our response reflects a shared ambition to shape Aberdeen for the long-term through robust, costed and achievable development.”
The council appointed a multi-disciplinary team headed by internationally renowned masterplanning consultancy BDP to work with the public, businesses and a range of other organisations to draw up the city centre masterplan and delivery programme.
Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce chief executive, Robert Collier, said: “A masterplan that we can all support and all help to deliver will be worth its weight in gold.
“It will be based on citizens’ feedback and comment; it will help us deal constructively with dispute and dissent; it will give us a Council with a single city centre vision owned by all political parties, thus removing damaging uncertainty; it will provide context for assessing individual developments; it will make funding easier to secure.”
His views were echoed by VisitAberdeen chief executive, Steve Harris, who added: “We all know that there are bits of our city centre that need work.
“We will all have areas that we see as better or higher priority than others, but I would urge everyone to get behind it and make sure we deliver it, together, as a city.”
The multimillion-pound proposals will be showcased at a series of public consultation events in and around Aberdeen from March 14-19, beginning at the International Market on Saturday.
The plans, the public response to them and the project delivery plan will then be brought before Aberdeen City Council for approval in the summer.