£350k plans to breathe new life into stagnant Schoolhill by turning offices into flats

Schoolhill is the emptiest street in Aberdeen city centre, with a row of abandoned shops.

By Ben Hendry

April 7 2025, 12:18 pm

Schoolhill flats plans have been lodged on the barren Aberdeen street. Image: Ben Hendry/DC Thomson

A Central Belt developer plans to spend £350,000 converting old offices on Aberdeen’s struggling Schoolhill into flats.

The street has long been recorded as the emptiest in the city centre.

There is a row of shuttered premises along Schoolhill, with the Wordies Alehouse pub in the middle lying closed since Covid.

Wordies has been closed for some time. Image: Ben Hendry/DC Thomson

And recently, the Style for Your Shape clothes store relocated from the street to the Trinity Centre amid plummeting footfall.

Since 2023, the number of empty units along the stretch has steadily grown from a 36% rate in 2023 to 50% as of March – with a total of 11 sitting vacant.

This makes it the emptiest street in Aberdeen, tied with the much smaller Gaelic Lane.

What are the new Aberdeen flats plans for Schoolhill upper floors?

The owner of 8-26 Schoolhill, Paisley-based Jonathan Lee, has now put forward proposals to inject new life into the city centre area.

Under the costly plans, a row of first floor offices will be converted to form four new flats.

Single storey extensions will be built to provide toilet facilities to the rear of the closed shops along the stretch too.

The former Forbidden Planet on Schoolhill closed years ago. Image: Ben Hendry/DC Thomson

Do you think Schoolhill has potential to thrive once again? Let us know in our comments section below

Are there wider plans for Schoolhill?

Plans to reimagine the ground floor units along Schoolhill were approved in 2022.

The fate of Wordies was sealed due to the flats plan upstairs, as the old fashioned tavern needed to be turned into something a bit less noisy first.

Local authority staff said having a busy bar downstairs would mean those living in the properties wouldn’t have “an adequate level of residential amenity”.