AFTER more than three years of debate and dispute, nearly 52% of those entitled to take part have cast their vote in a referendum to decide the future of a city gardens.
Aberdeen City Council officials said last night around 86,000 voting papers had been returned out of the 165,829 sent out in the ballot on the city's Union Terrace Gardens.
The exact figure will not be known until later today, but the early indications point towards a turnout of around 51.9% – higher than the 50.4% of Scots who turned out to vote in last year's Holyrood election.
Counting will begin this morning, with the final result expected in the middle of the day, when it will become clear if the residents of Aberdeen have voted in favour of the proposed £140 million upgrade of the gardens.
Oil tycoon Sir Ian Wood has pledged £50m from his family trust in support of the plan to raise the sunken gardens to street level, and transform them into the Granite Web envisaged by the New York based Diller Scofidio & Renfro design studio. The trust will also make a further £35m to cover any overspend.
Both sides in the debate said they couldn't predict the result.
Colin Crosby, director of Aberdeen City Gardens Trust, said: "It's difficult to call. This project has divided opinion in the three years since it was mooted. But we are hoping that the majority of the Aberdeen public will have voted for transformation.
"There has certainly been more demonstrable support for the City Garden since the winning design was unveiled and people have seen the amazing potential for the city."
Mike Shepherd, of the Friends of Union Terrace Gardens, the campaign group opposing the plans, said: "I think it is pretty close. We have been getting mixed messages.
"We have a few dozen people going round the doors, leafleting, asking what people think and we are getting a tremendous amount of support.
"But when we go out and talk to people on the street, we get a different message with it about 50/50. We can get entire families split.
"Some of the older people who you might think would be for us are voting for the development. But on the other hand we getting support from younger people, who are obviously committed to preserving the city's heritage."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article