Aberdeen Developments

[legslikeaspider]

Bout time we had a thread for this bit of the country to go with the existing Dundee, Edinburgh and Stirling threads. Pit yir Aiberdeen news here.

I'm not a regular visitor to this fine city so maybe a better informed local might want to fill us in on the latest city centre developments. I would have thought there might be some interesting stuff going on in a city of Aberdeen's size.

However, three recent stories spring to mind when i think about developments in the Aberdeen.

First: there's the controversial Donald Trump Golfcourse and Luxury Resort plans. The latest is that following Aberdeenshire Council's rejection of The Donald's planning application, the Holyrood Government have swung in with a view to overriding the Council's decision. Here's The Herald story. What do we make of this? It sounds like he wants to build a latterday Gleneagles up there. Something in me wants to lash out at the scale and opulence of his plans, it sounds distasteful, like something built in Dubai, but given that tourism is one of the biggest sectors of the Scottish Economy should councils be doing more to encourage this level of investment?

Second: Aberdeen has the fastest growing airport in Scotland. One story I noticed recently was a business class only carrier will soon start up a service between Aberdeen and Houston Texas. Anybody know of any other long haul routes from Aberdeen starting up soon?

Third, there's a story in The Record today that Aberdeen FC are looking again at plans for a new 30,000 seater stadium not far from their current, atmospheric Pittodrie home

[Boards]

Humour or not, I think you should have spelt Aberdeen correctly in the actual thread title if you want this to become a quasi-official thread for this region.

[gothicform]

coming from this area and knowing it well i hope trump fucks off. what i dont understand is why he wants to build it there. he says its because its such a beautiful place - but surely if its beautiful then itll be ruined by him building it.
he also bangs on about his scottish heritage and yet the moment something doesnt go right starts looking to northern ireland. very nice mr trump. im writing about this now by the way....

[The Boy David]

No no no no no.

Trumps golf course will, quite literally, save the North East of Scotland.


What are Aberdeen City and Shire councils looking at doing just now over all others? Diversification of income, moving on from the fact that the oil will not last forever. Some may say they have started 20 years too late, and judging by the state of current financial services, retail and transport sectors I would have to agree.

So, for all focus must still obviously be put on the Oil industry (heartened by the recent discovery of oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico that were before unreachable with older technology), a large amount of attention must be diverted to the area's other primary potential money maker: Tourism, and in particular, the hallowed, "Scotch" game of Golf. This development has the unrivaled potential to bring the Worlds richest people to spend outrageous amounts of money that would normally only be expected by the richest of Oil developers.

The scope for not only increased local spending, but National advertisement is quite simply enormous. This will, without doubt, attract Celebrities, the Rich list and Sports Personalities from all over the world, putting, for good or for bad, Scotland on the map of places to go when you have more money to spend than you have working brain cells.

Now I must clarify: I don't care less who comes to Aberdeen, how they get there, how much of a awful or superficial they are, whatever. I don't intend ever playing, or even trying to play, or stay at this resort. And I know Trump is a ruthless customer, dangerously slippy and a nightmare to deal with, but the potential money this could bring is possibly more than all the existing touristic and golf attractions in the North East combined. Missing out on an influx of wealth previously unknown to the Scottish economy would be disastrous.

Just because they want to build a pretty exuberant and pretty tacky resort on some "scientifically valuable land", it is utterly no reason to stop the creation of the region's only future lifeline. And scientific-schmific: there's tons of land around that area and across Scotland to be examined - that patch, while perhaps of relative interest to geologists, is not important enough to cut out $Billions of investment from around the world.

Put things into perspective here. Yes, Trump is an awful character, and yes, the development isn't particularly tasteful, but do you want there to be an Aberdeen worth visiting in 40 years time? If so, Foreign Direct Investment is Utterly essential, and this FDI is a one in a million chance of such magnitude that it will not come around again.

[gleegie]

^Well put.

[crusty_bint]

indeed

If this doesn't go through it will send out the message Scotland is not a good place to do business. And it's not as if he's proposing a nuclear power plant - its a freakin golf course.

[oats]

What I find a bit spurious is this claim that 1500 dwellings have to be built 'so he can pay for the golf course'...really?!

[Snudge]

The property development is just him squeezing as much out of it as he can and I think he has every right to, he is willing to put huge sums of money into this project.

I applaud the government's decision to call this in, the knock back goes against Salmond's Scotland is open for business pitch and Scotland can not afford to knock this investment back, particularly the North East for all the reasons listed by Boy David. I hope it goes ahead.

[Momus]

Originally Posted by Snudge

I applaud the government's decision to call this in, the knock back goes against Salmond's Scotland is open for business pitch and Scotland can not afford to knock this investment back, particularly the North East for all the reasons listed by Boy David. I hope it goes ahead.

This sets a potentially dangerous precedent for the Goverment.

We already have defined process for dealing with a planning refusal - its called a 'Planning Appeal' and it should remain within the confines of current legislation.

[gothicform]

indeed why should trump be the only person in the world who doesnt have his project go to an appeal and then public inquiry? if he does not itll be berkeley vs lots road all over again except this time the developer will lose because there has been no proper ministerial oversight.

[The Boy David]

It's this sort of small-town thinking that got Scotland and the UK into such a mess in the first place.

It's all about who's getting what isn't it?: "Oh, can't have him making money, not without me getting something, or at least deriding him and his ambition for proposing something we cannot."

It's so petty. The Scottish attitude towards other people's success and ambition is pathetic. Any spark (from school onwards) is criticized by everyone around them, 'cos they're getting above their station.

Rules, precedents, regulations. Blah blah blah. So it's important to have them, but if we stuck to them every time a big investment opportunity came around we'd still be in the blooming stone-age.

Loosen up and shrug off the Scottish or UK way of thinking. As Trump's spokesman said after the development was turned down by the council:

"All this shows is that if you want to do big business, don't do it in the North East of Scotland"

And I tell you what, with nay-saying attitudes like the council displayed, and those above this post, I can tell he's right.

What an embarrassment.

[gothicform]

how is it small town thinking to make trump jump through the same plannign hoops as every other development in the entire country whether in aberdeen or london?

[The Boy David]

Originally Posted by gothicform

how is it small town thinking to make trump jump through the same plannign hoops as every other development in the entire country whether in aberdeen or london?

That's just it! Make him jump through HOOPS?!

I'm not sure you realise just how important this investment will be to the north east!

HOOPS?! That's exactly what I was just talking about.... there should be no hoops here! It's not as if the hotel is shaped like a bloody Swastika, is it? The plans are not bad enough to need to jump through anything, considering what they represent.

[crusty_bint]

here fuckin here Davey. I'm voting you next time!

This is nothing more than snobbery, if it was Prince Charles who wanted to do it that feckin Local Authority would be up at Balmoral wiping his arse with their planning consents. Trump is an arrogant American tosser, but so what - its not as if Scotland or any other nation has a shortage of them. For you to infer, Gothic, that Trump is somehow circumventing the planning process is simply not true, the Scottish Government has stepped in now because a Local Authority has made a decision out of disdain for Trump which affects the entire nation.

[gweilo]

Gothic's right. I actually didn't have an opinion one way or another on Trump's proposal but whether we like it or not the law is the law and this move by the Scottish Government (I still think Executive sounds so much better) sets a highly unusual precedent in Scottish planning law. If it was a national development it should have been declared as such in the first place. If we as a nation wanted it so badly we should have had our act together rather than making it up as we go along.

I don't have a problem per se with Trump but he should be treated in the eyes of the law the same as anyone else. What he was proposing was a departure from the local plan and was evaluated as such. The UK planning system is discretionary and you take your chances. That is the risk. Like it or not because it wasn't declared as a national development the councillors had the last word.

If Aberdeen as a local authority was meant to be planning effectively for a post oil future it should have had an effective strategy in place before now rather than hanging their hat on a passing Billionaire who came along by chance.

This whole thing reflects very badly on us as a nation and it stinks. No one is coming away clean from this. Trump's organisation (who are hardly squeaky clean and by all accounts have some pretty odious business practices in the states such as not paying contractors) have come across as inflexible and their conduct is a little on the bullying side for my taste, Aberdeen council are looking incompetent, and the Scottish Government appear to be making it up on the hoof.

Given that Salmond has had meetings with Trump, and I've heard that Swinney stayed in one of his hotels in the states last week this call in looks pretty dubious. As a Scot I find the whole thing highly embarassing.

If we want people to invest in our country we need to get our act together. Proactive not reactive please.

[crusty_bint]

Actually, I can't disagree with any of that^

Originally Posted by gweilo

This whole thing reflects very badly on us as a nation and it stinks. No one is coming away clean from this. Trump's organisation (who are hardly squeaky clean and by all accounts have some pretty odious business practices in the states such as not paying contractors) have come across as inflexible and their conduct is a little on the bullying side for my taste, Aberdeen council are looking incompetent, and the Scottish Government appear to be making it up on the hoof.

...Proactive not reactive please.

particularly that part^

[gweilo]

You know though there have been comments that Scots are being made mugs of by Trump here and that the only benefits for locals will be jobs washing dishes for rich tourists which is hardly a economic step up from having professionals in Oil industry HQ's... I'd still rather have this development than not have anything. If it goes to Northern Ireland we're just going to look like idiots.

That said I can't understand Trump's inflexibilty. It just smacks of arrogance. The SSSI was only a part of the site. Why not just avoid it and remove the environmental angle from the picture? It would have made life a lot easier and rebellions by councillors less likely. That would have been win win.

The irony in all this is that the one person Trump couldn't afford to offend was Aberdeenshire Council's infrastructure committee chairman Martin Ford. The guy is an environmentalist with a degree in botany! It should have been obvious which way he'd vote! Trumps organisation should have known that and made allowances.

[crusty_bint]

Well Trump knows that he can play us (SCotland) against each other (N.I.) for his $billions, but its a fair point, he could have accomodated the changes needed to negate the environmental argument

[gothicform]

thats precisely what i was trying to explain gweilo. youve done it much more elegantly than me

what bothers me isnt so much that its been refused, trump could appeal. if that fails then ministers can call it in for a public inquiry. what bothers me is they want to skip the appeal and public inquiry... why? regardless of the rights and wrongs, trump's resort deserves the exact same hearing as any other project in the country. if it does not get this then the green lobby will force a judicial review and win easily.

what trump is failing to do is what pretty much every developer does. if they are serious about a project and get knocked back then they revise it. trump, despite boasting about his scottish roots and how much he loves the area is now revealed as someone who couldnt care less where it was built as long as he gets his own way.

instead, what we are seeing is what appears to him having priveleged access to scottish ministers that is not available to most and them looking like taking decisions that are *very* dubious. salmond is bitching about sleaze right now... he wont know what hits him if this is approved without going through the system properly because the green lobby will have his guts for garters.

[legslikeaspider]

good points all round.

Swinney might well have made a major boo boo by staying at Trump's hotel, I'm very surprised at his naivety. I'm not sure though if the green lobby will be a louder voice than those in favour of the development: £1 Billion of investment is an incredible figure. I imagine Salmond knows how this will sound to his constituents (I might be wrong but he is the local MSP?) if some small bit councillor wants to play the hero by defying Trump's global conglomerate, hence his decision to step in.

EDIT: Just seen this story in The Herald. Ministers 'calling in' a plannning decision is not unprecedented and actually seems to happen regularly. I'm not sufficiently familiar with the ins and outs of this case if what has happened with the Trump plan is different to any of the other items that have been called in.