Work towards converting a historic north-east building into a new face for Aberdeenshire Council has started.
Contractors have been deployed to Fraserburgh Town House in an effort to make the property ready for a massive refurbishment effort which will convert it and the port’s former police station into offices for the local authority and start-up businesses.
Work started this week when two giant portraits of the town’s forefathers were put into storage.
The huge paintings are so large that contractors had originally believed they would need to remove an upstairs window and use a crane to take them out.
They were, however, taken unscathed through the building’s front doors and sent to Mintlaw where they will stay until the building is transformed.
Part of the refurbishment work will include installing a “rusted steel” canopy at the rear of the property, which has been branded an “eyesore” by some residents and former councillors in the town.
But the architect behind the project, Ben Addy, who established Moxon Architects in 2004, has defended the scheme.
“The extension will efficiently and sensitively link both properties to provide a welcoming and elegant public face for the council,” he said.
“The robust design is conceived as a largely permeable structure set against the massive construction typology of the existing historic buildings.”
Council area manager Margaret-Jane Cardno has also defended the project, part of a wider £5million effort to regenerate Fraserburgh’s town centre over the next five years.
But councillor Hamish Partridge, who runs a business in the town, and former councillor Ian Tait have blasted the scheme.
Mr Partridge claims the money could be “better spent” on other projects across the port, while Mr Tait has said the design would create a “scar” on the face of the port.
The row over the project reached a boiling point last year when a member of the town’s community council resigned in protest over the designs.
