Aberdeen chairman Dave Cormack insists a proposed new Dons stadium at the heart of a redeveloped beachfront is vital for the city of Aberdeen.
Council chiefs insist the club will have to fund the stadium themselves with councillors set to discuss the wider beachfront masterplan today.
Cormack believes a firm commitment to work with the Dons is needed from the council before a serious funding effort can be made by the club.
He said: “Our appeal to the council is to form a working group to look at how we can pull this off.
“We had been out with the council to talk to potential funding sources, whether it be grants for a net zero stadium or greater facilities like a leisure centre.
“But you can only really get into dialogue with these people when they ask the question: Is the council totally behind this?
“For us, it is important to get together, form a working group and evaluate every opportunity we have to pull this off, because if we can bring 38 million people to the stadium – almost double what it is at Pittodrie – over the next 50 years, and we can generate more than £50 million of economic upside for the city, not for the club, it’s compelling.”
Funding gap question cannot be answered
When asked how much the Dons could contribute to the project the Dons chairman said: “The difficulty is answering that question is that we are looking at financial partners.
“This is a huge commercial venture and you have to put your best foot forward, we’re all in this together and investigate the funding sources.
“I can’t tell you how much I can raise until I can go out there with the council to those sources and know the council is behind getting it done.
“We were approached by the council to stay in the city as part of the masterplan and we’ve been actively supportive of the council’s plans.
“The previous administration was wondering how they could drive footfall when this arose 18 months ago when we were going through Covid and the council at the time was wondering how to put Aberdeen back on the map and make it appealing for families to want to come and live here.
“This isn’t just about the stadium, this is about the whole city masterplan.
“So it is a bigger issue of what do Aberdeen City Council want to make it appealing for companies and their employees and their families to want to come and live in the city?”
Stadium is about more than the Dons
The council’s unwillingness to make a financial contribution to the stadium has cast doubt over a new home for the Dons at the beach becoming a reality.
But Cormack says the project is about so much more than building a new home for the club – and should be treated as such.
The chairman said: “We’re not talking about building a football stadium. We’re talking about building a community stadium.
“We couldn’t build this on our own.
“The message is that if we in Aberdeen don’t invest in the infrastructure we can’t go from fossil fuel to renewable energy.
“It doesn’t have to be done in two years. It could be 15 years.
“I don’t want this to be seen as me having a go at the council… we are willing and able to work with them.
“Some funding sources might say: ‘if there’s no football there, why should we support other parts of the plan’?”
Kingsford is Plan B if beachfront plan fails
Should the project fail to proceed, then the mothballed proposal to build a new ground at Kingsford will be resurrected.
Cormack said: “If it comes back that it isn’t feasible as a project then we have to go back and dust-off the plans for Kingsford.
“We’ve already spend £2.5 million preparing the ground for that stadium.”
