Jul 232010
 

By Alex Mitchell.

Monday 12th July 2010, warm and sunny. Left the car in the Denburn car park, walked under the Viaduct and into Union Terrace Gardens – the one substantial green space in Aberdeen city centre – beautiful, verdant, quiet, restful, and well-maintained as always by Council Parks and Gardens staff. A fair smattering of people sitting around, including women with children. No drunks. The trees all seem in good health, despite ACSEF propaganda. Up on to Union Street. The awful, tacky Sports Direct shop frontage – formerly Zavvi, before that the Virgin Megastore – is still in evidence, months after we were assured by the Planning Department that it would be dealt with. Continue reading »

Jul 022010
 

By Alex Mitchell

After a little consideration of the inescapable fundamental features of the City Square/ Gardens Project, some construction engineering issues arise.

Surely there would be significant challenges to be overcome after creating a 3-4 storey steel & concrete building in a deep hole in the ground that would have once been our Victorian Union Terrace Gardens. A river valley, a natural drainage sump, topped off by a vast (5-acre) and largely flat concrete expanse – where would the rainwater go? A situation further exacerbated when businesses, shops and restaurants would be operating in the ‘concourse’ directly below.

Continue reading »

Jul 022010
 

By Mike Shepherd.

St Mark's Church, Rosemount Viaduct

View from Skene Terrace of St Mark's Church, Rosemount Viaduct.

With the fate of Union Terrace Gardens much in debate at the moment, the preservation of Aberdeen’s heritage is a major issue within the city. In this light, the annual lecture of the Aberdeen City Heritage Trust given at the Town House on Tuesday 22d June was topical. The title: “A future for granite in the granite city?”

Dr. Ewan Hyslop of the British Geological Survey talked about the building stones of Scotland and granite in particular. Scottish geology varies so much, that there is a legacy of each Scottish town showing a distinctive architectural style according to its local building materials. For example, Glasgow is built from ‘blonde’ sandstone, Stonehaven from the old red sandstone and Aberdeen in grey granite.

These buildings give a very strong sense of place and identity to our towns and cities.

Continue reading »

Jul 022010
 

Union Terrace GardensWritten by John Aberdein.

Dear Councillor,

Like, I daresay, the vast majority of Aberdonians and Aberdeen-dwellers, I believe in cherishing the city’s character, in proper maintenance of the city’s assets, and in sustainable improvements to the city’s infrastructure.

I take it that we agree that to guarantee such cherishing, maintenance and sustainable improvement is your responsibility as a councillor, along with your fellow-councillors. No-one can legitimately ‘wait and see what happens’. You have a responsibility to take control of events. That is what the democratic process is about – or it is nothing.

If the democratic process becomes sidelined, then we are all in deep trouble. Continue reading »

Jun 242010
 

Here is a list of ten better uses for the 50 million quid. Please let me know what you think or if any amendments should be made or whatever. I’ve got an artist drawing a few of them up for added funniness!!

1. Buy enough rocket fuel to send a certain executive board into deep space and, if that is not enough money, raise business rates to pay for the rest!

2. Give £1000 to each household in Aberdeen so we can all party our way out of recession.

3. Invest in research to resurrect Scotty from Star Trek back from the dead and get him to beam undesirable councillors up! Would make a change from beams of sunlight supposedly shining out of their backsides!

4. Pay for the new Aberdeen Football Club stadium and use the change to pay Cristiano Ronaldo to play the second half against Rangers.

5. Spend it on a fleet of tanks with huge water cannons loaded with vast quantities of quick setting soundproofing foam to spray on vehicles pumping out excessively load boomf-boomf music.

6. Add an extra 50p to the budget and pay for the Lord Provost’s winter clothes collection!

7. Build a time machine on the cheap and go back to the 1800’s where we could pay for 1000 city squares with the leftover cash!

8. Buy every person in Aberdeen with a disability a new souped-up electric wheelchair, decked out with performance tyres, race car seats and leather trim as an apology for closing down day-centres!

9. Demolish the Bon Accord centre and replace it with a huge fountain flanked by gold statues of Willie Miller, Joe Harper, Denis Law, Jim Leighton and Alex Ferguson, each mounted on a giant rowie held in the beak of an even bigger seagull! An artist’s impression would be good. Maybe we should put aside £25m for the consultation, and run a design contest?

10. And finally…Pay for a tenth of the CSP shambles!

…. So what do you think? Do you have a better ( or sillier ) way to spend £50? Write to us with your ideas

Article by Ross Cunningham

Illustrations by Anita Inverarity

Jun 242010
 

Union Terrace Gardens: Aberdeen City Council decided in favour of the ACSEF/Ian Wood City Square Project on Wednesday 19th May 2010. We must respect the democratic process, although many citizens found the outcome incomprehensible. It appears that the decisive stage in the Debate was the split vote, 14-14, on Labour and Conservative amendments presenting a straight choice between the Peacock scheme and the City Square Project with eleven councillors abstaining. The split-vote impasse was resolved by the Lord Provost, who deployed his casting vote in support of the City Square Project, effectively killing off the Peacock option.

Conventional planning practice in the event of a split vote is that the Chairman votes in support of the ‘status quo’, i.e., for no change, against the new proposal or application. The ‘status quo’ in this case might reasonably be considered to be the Peacock scheme,

Continue reading »

Jun 242010
 
Archive image of Union Terrace Gardens

Saturday 12 June saw over a thousand people assemble for a picnic in Union Terrace Gardens, a mass event organised to inform people about the City Square Project. A diverse range of people visited to voice their concerns, get more information and exchange views. As everyone enjoyed the gathering, Friends of Union Terrace Gardens stewards provided writing equipment to encourage people to contact councillors to make clear the discontent with the decision to destroy the Gardens in favour of a city square. Continue reading »