New stadium thread

[Panda]

Dave Cormack and Alan Burrows to meet the council on Friday. Comments from Cormack here (courtesy of EE/P&J):-
 

I was approached when I took over from Stewart as chairman six years ago by the council to say they would really like for the club to consider staying in the city centre, and the city can’t afford to lose the club and what it brings to the city centre.

That journey started, and obviously there’s been a change in the administration as well, which can happen, and we continue to have a number of discussions.

We jointly did an economic report with the city council through the chamber of commerce.

It was a well-known economist close to the government that did the work.

After that was done, the council kind of pushed back on the validity – or bias, if you like – of the report.

So far forward two years to where we are maybe now, and we had bigger economists who are actually used by the SNP government, Westminster, some top companies around the UK as well, independently to do a report.

They basically said the economic upside of Aberdeen staying in the city centre in the next 50 years is £1.6 billion.

If we move to a new community stadium as an anchor tenant, therefore attracting other sports/businesses to the city centre, that would double to £3.2 billion.

That report and update was presented by Alan and myself to the four leaders of all the major parties about two months ago.

We agreed we’d try to put heads of terms together.

I asked everybody: ‘Let’s put our swords down. let’s think about Aberdeen’, because boy, with the challenges we’ve got in a high taxation for oil companies, importing £50 billion of oil, including from the North Sea, from Norway.

You know, I worry about my family that’s in Aberdeen and my nieces, nephews and their kids. And I’m sure you worry about your families – where the jobs are going to go.

I think it was a free vote in a council of 45 seats, it would get passed tomorrow.

So what we’ve got to continue to do, and they’ve asked us to meet on Friday again, is to see whether we can get them on board to really evaluating this.

There’s no point in us pushing a heavy trolley up a steep hill for another three or four more years.

But make no mistake that if the city lost the club in the city centre, it would be pretty catastrophic.

On the infrastructure investment, there are councils all over Britain getting this money – going and borrowing this money at low interest for capital investments.

This isn’t about building a primary school. This isn’t about putting the trash out or the rubbish out. This is about a significant project that will attract and retain jobs in Aberdeen.

Because these renewable energy jobs… If we are going to attract them to Aberdeen, these companies are saying, what is it for them to do in Aberdeen?

If you go down to the council, the chief executive there will tell you that if you want to go to a decent leisure centre, you have to drive to Dundee now, because of the demolition of one that’s there (at Aberdeen beach). That’s pretty kind of tough to attract companies here when there’s nothing for them to do.

And we’ve got a beautiful asset at the beachfront to build all sorts of sport, integrated sports, leisure, coffee shops.

Instead of closing down when the Inversnecky Cafe closes at five or six at night, it could be living, breathing til midnight – coffee shops etc. in a village environment. Things like a Top Golf would come to Aberdeen.

There are people, operators, that want to come to Aberdeen and get involved in this project. But they won’t talk to anyone because they don’t believe anyone’s got the vision to do it.

It’s not up to the club, right? It has to be the council and the vision and leadership of the council that says: ‘we want to do this or evaluate this fully and go to the Scottish government in Holyrood and go to Westminster to raise or get funds made available.’

What really probably got us, that it came out in the local paper, was that all we were prepared to do was give them a land of Pittodrie.

That’s never been the case. That’s not been the case for the six years of discussions we’ve had where they asked us to be a tenant in a multi-purpose facility.

“What we would be doing over the term of the least 50, 100 years is paying 10s of millions of pounds in rent and rates, providing income.

I don’t know what anybody thinks of that play park that’s out there for £55 million.

But I know it will bring zero income in, and it will be a maintenance cost each year to run it, which is fine.

Our project will generate £3.2billion over the next 50 years and employ another 600 or 700 people in this area.

So what we need to do, to answer the question properly, is continue to try to meet and get an honesty from them.

Do you really want to do this? If you don’t want to do it, that’s fine.

Of course, there’s elections coming up. In Scotland, the local elections.

These elections that come up could determine some changes as well.

And I’m really trying to be absolutely non-political with this – this is about Aberdeen. This is about the future generation way beyond us of Aberdeen and having a city to be proud of.

I never would have thought I would have sat here in Aberdeen and said Dundee’s got way more attractions than Aberdeen City in spite of 60 years of oil coming in here. And that’s pretty depressing.

So, at the end of the day, people vote.

And maybe instead of 22% of people turning up to vote in the local elections, there might be 80%. But that’s down to the populace – we’ll continue.

I believe, we believe in this project of a community stadium – 6,000 square feet of community social access. There’s tonnes that we can do.

But anyway, I’m a cup half-full kind of guy, and I’m going to continue to stay positive.

We probably need to give that about another 18 months to two years to see it through.

If that’s not going to happen, we need to look at an alternative.

[manc_don]

Again, what’s with the public asset bashing? He needs to stop denigrating public amenities, just because you don’t have to pay to use it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t add value to a city, that’s just conservative churchy bullshit. The two things can and need to coexist for anywhere to be successful. 

[TheDonbytheDee]

At least Cormack isn't politicising the debate, that's a relief.

Using economists who advise the SNP and Westminster Governments will help. 

I mean, you'd trust the people advising them about as much as a Jimmy Saville creche service.

Nobody is arguing that the stadium needs to stay in the city, fuck me the clue is in our name. It boils down to cost and who pays for what.

 

We should be calling out Cormack for even suggesting moving OUR club outside the city boundaries. The club have had decades to build a new stadium, but lets politicise the debate now, after 15+ years of austerity politics, leaving the country without a pot to piss in.

The elephant in the room for me, will always be having all that oil and gas a few miles off the coast of Aberdeen and hardly a thing to show for it. Not a fucking thing.

 

 

 

 

[Panda]

21 minutes ago, TheDonbytheDee said:

We should be calling out Cormack for even suggesting moving OUR club outside the city boundaries. 

But he's trying to keep it in the city, and seems a lot more keen on it staying there than the council are.

If, ultimately, he can't get the council to agree to help, then he has to look elsewhere. Pittodrie is not going to stand forever, and any upgrades are going to reduce the capacity.

If Aberdeenshire council approached him and offered him the same deal he's trying to get the city council to take, then would we turn that down?

Many Aberdeenshire sites are practically the city anyway. Like I posted on the previous page of this thread, back in 2012 the club were offered a range of Aberdeenshire sites in Portlethen, Balmedie, Blackdog, Blackburn and Westhill. Blackdog especially, you may as well just call it Bridge of Don.

Edited yesterday at 04:05 by Panda

[Mason89]

The problem for me is that you can’t trust a single thing the club says regarding stadium development. I’d imagine that’s a problem for the council too 

I can’t ever see them reaching an agreement but on the off chance they do, I want Cormack to write it in blood that he’s not going to name it after himself. The chocolate 

[Slim]

He's a few whiskys away from a late night rant calling council members "dumb" and promising to make Aberdeen "great again".

He goes on about that play park more often than his role model goes on about wind turbines. Hazlehead Park is always absolutely rammed after they did the big upgrade to the playpark and similar footfall for the beach playpark will be a massive increase in customers for the existing businesses in the area.

Would be interesting to know a bit more about this "low interest for capital investments". I've been involved in something similar recently, talking to same institutions providing these funds and the messaging has been quite clear that they are not allowed to undercut banks on interest rates. Might be different for public sector.

Still think the site in question has too many challenges anyway, I reckon you'll be looking at several million in additional groundworks over more in-land sites (disclaimer - not a geologist) and looks to be a bit of a squeeze without carving out part of the Broadhill.

If you can squeeze in the stadium there, there's a similar footprint between George Street and Skene Square if you can incentivise the businesses in the old buildings on Ann Street to relocate. Train track runs under where the "plaza" would be, opportunity for a stadium station, road to the west is planned to be dualled up to St Machar. Can re-use the red bricks from the mill in the facade (sustainability and heritage boxes ticked). A proper city centre stadium would be fucking ace. 4 steep stands, none of this bowl bollocks.

[RicoS321]

27 minutes ago, Slim said:

He's a few whiskys away from a late night rant calling council members "dumb" and promising to make Aberdeen "great again".

He goes on about that play park more often than his role model goes on about wind turbines. Hazlehead Park is always absolutely rammed after they did the big upgrade to the playpark and similar footfall for the beach playpark will be a massive increase in customers for the existing businesses in the area.

Would be interesting to know a bit more about this "low interest for capital investments". I've been involved in something similar recently, talking to same institutions providing these funds and the messaging has been quite clear that they are not allowed to undercut banks on interest rates. Might be different for public sector.

Still think the site in question has too many challenges anyway, I reckon you'll be looking at several million in additional groundworks over more in-land sites (disclaimer - not a geologist) and looks to be a bit of a squeeze without carving out part of the Broadhill.

If you can squeeze in the stadium there, there's a similar footprint between George Street and Skene Square if you can incentivise the businesses in the old buildings on Ann Street to relocate. Train track runs under where the "plaza" would be, opportunity for a stadium station, road to the west is planned to be dualled up to St Machar. Can re-use the red bricks from the mill in the facade (sustainability and heritage boxes ticked). A proper city centre stadium would be fucking ace. 4 steep stands, none of this bowl bollocks.

Get it built.

In terms of the loan, Cormack means that the council would fund the entire development (give or take) as they can access low interest loans, and the club would essentially pay them back via long term lease. It's very unlikely to happen.

[Slim]

2 minutes ago, RicoS321 said:

In terms of the loan, Cormack means that the council would fund the entire development (give or take) as they can access low interest loans, and the club would essentially pay them back via long term lease. It's very unlikely to happen.

Yeah, I was more interested in validating that low interest loans are actually available. Organisations like SNIB, National Wealth Fund, etc are apparently not allowed to offer lower borrowing rates than commercial banks, at least to similar private sector projects of national importance in terms of job protection, energy transition, re-skilling, etc.

[OneBrianIrvine.]

On 02/12/2025 at 05:52, TheDonbytheDee said:

For me anyway, a stadium outside Aberdeen means, we're not Aberdeen anymore.

If the economic benefits of a new stadium are so good and obvious, then why don't the great and the good of the City, many of whom have made a fortune from the oil and gas industry, not step up and chip in a few quid to build it.

Be much more of a legacy than a car park at the hospital.

Cormack is a shark and we have a few more than him involved at the club with very deep pockets (and short arms).

I do agree that our Council is poor, has been for years, but not a unique problem to Aberdeen.

Look at the limited gene pools in Westminster, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. Not a ringing endorsement of UK politics and it gets even worse at local government level.

The last thing we need as a city, is for the stadium debate to become politicised. 

I trust Cormack about as much as I trust the council.

 

Pap on. Word for word.

[RicoS321]

5 hours ago, Slim said:

Yeah, I was more interested in validating that low interest loans are actually available. Organisations like SNIB, National Wealth Fund, etc are apparently not allowed to offer lower borrowing rates than commercial banks, at least to similar private sector projects of national importance in terms of job protection, energy transition, re-skilling, etc.

Yep, I think the key to the offer being generously made by Cormack is that the loan will be entirely in the council's name, and they won't be loaning anything to the Dons, they will just be owning our stadium. 

[Jupiter]

Still never going to happen

[tom_widdows]

8 hours ago, Slim said:

He's a few whiskys away from a late night rant calling council members "dumb" and promising to make Aberdeen "great again".

He goes on about that play park more often than his role model goes on about wind turbines. Hazlehead Park is always absolutely rammed after they did the big upgrade to the playpark and similar footfall for the beach playpark will be a massive increase in customers for the existing businesses in the area.

Would be interesting to know a bit more about this "low interest for capital investments". I've been involved in something similar recently, talking to same institutions providing these funds and the messaging has been quite clear that they are not allowed to undercut banks on interest rates. Might be different for public sector.

Still think the site in question has too many challenges anyway, I reckon you'll be looking at several million in additional groundworks over more in-land sites (disclaimer - not a geologist) and looks to be a bit of a squeeze without carving out part of the Broadhill.

If you can squeeze in the stadium there, there's a similar footprint between George Street and Skene Square if you can incentivise the businesses in the old buildings on Ann Street to relocate. Train track runs under where the "plaza" would be, opportunity for a stadium station, road to the west is planned to be dualled up to St Machar. Can re-use the red bricks from the mill in the facade (sustainability and heritage boxes ticked). A proper city centre stadium would be fucking ace. 4 steep stands, none of this bowl bollocks.

You proposed the same thing in August last year

https://www.donstalk.co.uk/topic/2019-new-stadium-thread/page/114/#findComment-259641

[TheDonbytheDee]

I was thinking the site at the old Shell building on Wellington Road, could be a decent site for it. No idea if it is big enough

I think Shell offerred it to the Council for development

[Slim]

Shell site now in hands of Scottish Enterprise, being marketed as part of the Energy Transition Zone. 

[RicoS321]

2 hours ago, Slim said:

Shell site now in hands of Scottish Enterprise, being marketed as part of the Energy Transition Zone. 

Let's transition energy to a football stadium then.