George Street crisis: What can be done to help businesses back to their feet?

More work must be done to give George Street businesses the break they deserve and badly need, according to Aberdeen property industry leaders.

The city centre street has been hit by an astonishing range of challenges in the past few years, from the pandemic and rising energy bills to the closure of John Lewis and the administration of the Bon Accord Centre.

According to Stuart Milne, the director of the Greater George Street Traders Association, the shops, services and takeaways based there face a “crisis situation”.

That has not gone unnoticed by some of Aberdeen’s most influential business leaders, who believe supporting the street would be a major step towards restoring the power of the city centre.

Defiant street

When we visited George Street on Friday morning, we found a defiantly independent stretch of storefronts.

This part of the city is not nearly as reliant on national chains as other areas, with Greggs, Sainsbury’s and William Hill some of the notable exceptions.

Independently owned beauty salons, tailors and tattoo shops sit alongside Aberdeen mainstays like Finnies the Jeweller and Thain’s bakery.

Wonderfully, there is even room for some quirkiness: the two competing fancy dress shops located next door to each other, for example, or the Green Fairy Florist with its gothic window display.

But what stuck out most was a surprising lack of empty shops.

Unlike other parts of the city centre, which sometimes give the impression of being unable to bail out the flood of ‘To Let’ signs, businesses on George Street seem to have staying power.

However, the travails of the street were reaffirmed when I unexpectedly bumped into a group of people who were gathering responses for a consultation on the area’s mini-masterplan.

Shoppers were bringing up issues like substance misuse and unemployment, while others admitted to only using the road as a means of getting to other parts of the city.

What can be done for George Street?

Work on the mini-masterplan started before John Lewis announced its departure from the street last year.

But with consultations continuing, it is hoped the plan will offer a substantial opportunity for rejuvenation when it is presented to the council in December.

Meanwhile, Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce is hoping to form a civic partnership as part of a ‘Save Our Streets’ campaign, with George Street playing a role.

The organisation’s ambitions go further than that, though, with chief executive Russell Borthwick saying it must be made easier for developers to apply for change of use, while planning should be “more collaborative and less confrontational”.

That view was echoed by Derren McRae, the head of CBRE’s Aberdeen office.

He said: “It’s important to try and do all you can to encourage.

“If there’s a developer prepared to invest money in one of these vacant buildings, then the more simple and straightforward you can make that, the better.

“It’s too easy to just build on a greenfield site, it’s far more difficult to take an old building and convert it.”

He also said the local authority could take inspiration from Glasgow City Council’s decision to demolish the Buchanan Galleries “in the best shopping location in Scotland” to make room for a mixed-use site.

Taking a similar approach with the Bon Accord Centre could help solve the lack of office space in the city centre, he suggested.

Need to ‘link’ street with rest of city centre

For Stuart Johnston, a partner at DM Hall, the granular work to help George Street would only be effective once the entire city centre is back on the rise.

He said: “Where the city’s really fallen behind is that they’ve failed to link together places.

“It’s getting all the different parts to work together and really get people back into the city centre and retain people in the city centre.

“That’s why I think, personally, not pedestrianising Union Street is a massive missed opportunity.”

Council co-leader Ian Yuill refuted that allowing some buses to use central Union Street would have “any impact at all” on connectivity with other parts of Aberdeen, including George Street.

He added that the council would be keen to engage with the operators and administrators of the Bon Accord Centre as they “decide a way forward”.

He said: “We’re committed to working with existing businesses in the city centre, the new businesses interested in coming to Aberdeen city centre and investors to ensure the city centre is suitable for the 21st Century and the changing retail environment.

“We need a city centre that’s a place where people want to come and spend time, spend money, and our partnership will work with businesses and others to achieve that.”