Bon Accord owners enter administration
The Guernsey-based owners of Aberdeen’s Bon Accord shopping centre have entered administration.
It is understood that Aberdeen Retail 1 and Aberdeen Retail 2 suffered unsustainable cash flow problems stemming from the on-going impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Azets’ partners James Fennessey, Blair Milne, Colin Haig and Matthew Richards have been appointed joint administrators of both companies and will be managing the administration. The trio said it will be business as usual at Bon Accord whilst they work with agents to market its assets for onward sale.
Fennessey said: “The 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. They have consistently attracted and retained a wide range of quality retail tenants over the years, and regularly draw hundreds of thousands of visitors every year.
“The contribution of the Bon Accord to the economy of the North-East is significant and the centre is as much a social hub and focal point for the city as it is a retail centre. We will now quickly stabilise the trading position and wish to reassure tenants, shoppers and stakeholders that it is very much business as usual.”
Built in 1990, Bon Accord operates from two main buildings on Aberdeen’s George Street and Union Street and has 460,000 square feet of retail space with 72 retail units over three floors. Additional period buildings on George Street, Upper Kirkgate, Loch Street and Gallowgate provide a further 90,000 square feet of retail and ancillary space. The centre’s average annual footfall pre-Covid was 15 million.
