New stadium thread

[tom_widdows]

4 minutes ago, Kowalski said:

https://www.aberdeenlive.news/news/aberdeen-news/photos-show-latest-progress-aberdeen-10533092

Fair enough.

I yield to your local knowledge and chastise myself for ever doubting Aberdeen City Council would finally allow anything other than flats and retail parks to be constructed.

 

 

 

[Kowalski]

12 minutes ago, tom_widdows said:

Fair enough.

I yield to your local knowledge and chastise myself for ever doubting Aberdeen City Council would finally allow anything other than flats and retail parks to be constructed.

 

 

 

It’ll still be a shambles. Beach bouley at the bottom end closed for good - transport plans for a stadium closer to the beach will need to be well thought out. 

[swaddon]

I'm seeing on the BBC Sport gossip that Aberdeen's plan to sell Pittodrie will be rejected by the council. There's a link to a P & J article there, but I'm not paying to read it.

[Nordicus]

The link shows some articles , can read freely, If this is the latest it says council finance boss challenges Dave to find buyer himself:

"If Dave Cormack needs to raise capital to fund the stadium, he should be looking to the private market to sell Pittodrie.  If he was confident in it's value I am sure he would be able to sell it."

Mr Cormack turned down the chance of a reply

.........

quite right too (of the council bloke)

Edited November 30, 2025 by Nordicus

[Slim]

That land isn’t going to be worth much, especially if the buyer needs to cover the demolition costs.

[Jupiter]

Still never going to happen

[Panda]

From the outside, it looks to me Labour are using Cormack to paint the SNP/Lib Dems in a bad light to win them votes in the next council election.

Labour have previously done little to move on Aberdeen's stadium plans and I doubt we'll see any progress once they're back in power.

 

[Panda]

 

[tlg1903]

38 minutes ago, Panda said:

 

Shots fired! 

 

The cynic in me suspects the club is trying to use a convenient provocation to put this into the public domain 18 months out from council elections.

 

[Slim]

That statement’s a bit desperate sounding and dare I say it, a bit “Trump-y” in places. 

[Elgindon]

21 minutes ago, OneBrianIrvine. said:

Afraid to say I pay little attention to all this now and that’s as a supporter. The general public I’m sure pay little heed.

Aside - the only thing I dislike on this forum is seeing links to the South African weirdos website. 

Agreed,just rumbles on.Nae sure what SA website you mean?

[TheDonbytheDee]

16 minutes ago, Elgindon said:

Agreed,just rumbles on.Nae sure what SA website you mean?

She means Twitter and the South African weirdo is Musk.

[tom_widdows]

Personally think the comment about the new urban park was ill advised.

Aberdeen city doing something to improve the beach area that isnt a retail park should be applauded and to see it belittled and labelled a 'drain on council resources' is a harking back to the 80s where swimming pools, playparks, playing fields etc were sold off for profit or the early 2010s where to paraphrase Alexi Sayle

'Austerity is the idea that the global financial crash of 2008 was caused by there being too many libraries in Wolverhampton

If the club wants the be part of the community, it should want the community to be a nice place to live. 

 

[TheDonbytheDee]

Certainly shades of Trump with that statement.

We are getting into murky waters with statements like that.

 

 

[swaddon]

Cormack just wants to Make Aberdeen Great Again.

[TheDonbytheDee]

1 hour ago, swaddon said:

Cormack just wants to Make Aberdeen Great Again.

Dinna go there min.

I thought Dave was off the alcohol now.

Sounds like he's been on a bender and then sat down and wrote that shyte.

Just what the City needs right now, more division.

 

[tlg1903]

I don't live in Aberdeen so it's harder for me to judge how well this will go down.  From the outside looking in though can I ask, do the club not have a point?  Would the city not benefit hugely from this project as well as the bonus of keeping AFC within the city? I mean, if you think of all the money the club has brought into the Aberdeen economy over the years and bear in mind the club has never been outwith the top flight since reaching it.  That's a lot of away fans spending a lot of money in bars, hotels, restaurants, taxis etc since 1903. 

 

[Panda]

I've never been comfortable with Aberdeen going into any sort of partnership with the council, and I say that no matter what party is in power.

Aberdeen doesn't have a grown up council, either in power or in opposition. It has a collection of idiots who are doing more harm than good to the city. 

Dave Cormack is gaining nothing from engaging with them. He's being sold an unrealistic dream by the opposition and hitting a brick wall with those in power. 

It's a shite state of affairs, but honestly, I'd go talk to Aberdeenshire council (who I also don't trust truth be told, but they have in the past suggested various sites for the stadium). Go build it at Portlethen within walking distance of the train station. Next time we win the cup, hold the fucking parade in Inverurie. 
 

[Panda]

From a FOI request a few years ago. Here was Aberdeenshire Council's proposed sites for the new stadium.

Interestingly, there was one next to Kingsford, which made their opposition to Kingsford all the more puzzling.

 

 

 

 

Edited December 1, 2025 by Panda

[TheDonbytheDee]

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.

 

[Panda]

Covered training pitch timeline looks like it'll be next winter. Also looking to extend the changing rooms at Cormack Park.

[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 December 9, 2025 by Panda