By Ian McConnell
THE Channel Islands-based owners of Bon Accord shopping centre in Aberdeen have fallen into administration, amid cash-flow problems.
James Fennessey, Blair Milne, Colin Haig and Matthew Richards, partners of accountancy firm Azets, have been appointed as joint administrators of the Guernsey-based owners of the shopping centre, Aberdeen Retail 1 Limited and Aberdeen Retail 2 Limited.
The administrators said it remained “business as usual” for Bon Accord shopping centre while they “implement a strategy to ensure that the operating companies can continue to trade and whilst the centre and its assets are prepared for sale”.
They added: “The administration has been caused by unsustainable cash-flow problems stemming from the ongoing impact of the Covid pandemic, rising operational costs and intense retail competition.”
READ MORE: Ian McConnell: EU deal with New Zealand shows how desperate Tories failed UK farmers
Bon Accord shopping centre, built in 1990, extends to two main buildings on George Street and Union Street. It has 460,000 sq ft of retail space, with 72 units over three floors, and 1,400 car-parking spaces in two owner-operated car parks on the north and south sides of the centre.
Additional buildings on George Street, Upper Kirkgate, Loch Street and Gallowgate provide a further 90,000 sq ft of retail and ancillary space, and 6,300 sq ft of office space.
READ MORE: Ian McConnell: ‘Emergency’ – reality catches up with Tories, who fail to do anything about it
The average annual footfall to Bon Accord shopping centre was 15 million visitors before the coronavirus pandemic.
Azets said: “A diverse range of retail, hospitality and business tenants are based in the Bon Accord shopping centre and include a wide range of national high street retailers, specialist shops, restaurants, cafés and administrative businesses."
The joint administrators are encouraging interested parties to make contact as soon as possible and have appointed specialist commercial property agent Cushman & Wakefield to manage the sale process.
All centre management employees are being retained following the appointment of the administrators.
Mr Fennessey, restructuring partner at Azets, said: “Bon Accord shopping centre and the St Nicholas Centre, which merged with the Bon Accord in 2020, are long-established and retail centres with a very strong brand name and awareness across the north of Scotland.”
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 here