Celebrating Our Past, Investing in Our Future

Maggie McGinlay, Scottish Enterprise Regional Director, Aberdeen City & Shire discusses the importance of the City Garden Project to Aberdeen's future economic prosperity.

“In my role as Regional Director for Scottish Enterprise I recognise the importance of the City Garden project to the future economic prosperity of Aberdeen. Significant new investment, talent retention and attraction, job creation and the cultural renaissance of our great city can all be achieved without detriment to the Council’s revenue or capital budgets.

Infrastructure development is a key driver of economic growth and has been used to great effect in other international cities such as Bilbao, Spain where the development of the Guggenheim museum transformed the fortunes of that area. Closer to home, the V&A and Waterfront development in Dundee, is helping attract inward investment and bring jobs to the city.

The Malmaison Hotel is the latest high profile investment attracted to the Waterfront. They will build a new 91 bedroom hotel, due to open in 2013 which will bring 120 new jobs to the area. They join a growing number of businesses locating to the area on the back of the city’s physical and cultural regeneration.

Scottish Enterprise recognises that cities have a critical role to play in helping attract talent and investment to Scotland. Increasingly we have found that quality of life and a thriving city centre are important factors in individuals and businesses deciding where to locate. Competing city regions around the world have at their core vibrant and attractive city centres which are well functioning and easy to move around in. The City Garden can help unlock this for Aberdeen.

Whilst recognised as having a good quality of life, various studies show a lack of cultural amenities and poor City Centre public realm is adversely affecting the decisions of skilled individuals to choose to live and work in Aberdeen, particularly from the competitive global energy market.

Ernst & Young’s 2011 European attractiveness survey shows that local labour skills is one of the most important factors a company will take into account when deciding on where to locate their business.
An additional consideration for our local economy is retention of the existing oil and gas base in the region.

Already a lot of our companies deploy their personnel around the globe in pursuit of opportunities and market developments. We want them to remain in Aberdeen while they internationalise, maintaining headquarters, research & development, back office functions and many of the other high value activities here, generating wealth and providing jobs.

Otherwise we may lose their expertise. But we face global competition with other attractive locations around the world, hence the need for investments such as Energetica and the city centre redevelopments. For companies to invest in Aberdeen’s future, they need to see that the city has means to invest in its own future as well.

It is easy to see the correlation between regeneration and Aberdeen’s attraction as a location to live, work and do business. But that regeneration is dependent on investment in place. To this end, the City Garden project has already secured £55m with a further £15m to follow from private donations.

This private sector money has enabled an economic case to be made to Government to access innovative funding mechanisms which will unlock public money - not only for this project but also for improving Aberdeen Art Gallery, demolishing and redeveloping St Nicholas House, redeveloping North Denburn and improving how we get round our city centre.

Total investment of £182m could be available for investment in our city centre with no impact on the Council’s revenue or capital budget programme. If the City Garden project does not proceed, I believe that finding alternative sources of funding to allow these other projects to proceed quickly will prove exceptionally challenging.

In my role at Scottish Enterprise I am committed to doing all I can to work with others to secure a vibrant, healthy and competitive economy for this region and for those of us who live and work here. Economic Analysis by PWC has demonstrated that the £182m of investment planned has the potential to deliver more than 6500 jobs and £122m of wealth per year.

But we need positive action to make it happen. Embracing this incredible opportunity will create a legacy of jobs and prosperity for the city, and help ensure Aberdeen’s economic success in the future."