The director of city development in Dundee has emphatically denied a suggestion the V&A may have been shifted onshore to fund the £8.5 million pay-off to the Hilton Hotel and Gala Casino for quitting Dundee’s central waterfont.
The question was posed by the chairman of West End Community Council in his latest attack on the move to change the site of the £45 million museum.
Last month, Andrew McBride controversially criticised the proposal to slide most of the V&A on to the land for the prestigious Kengo Kuma project to be built on budget and on time for its 2015 scheduled opening.
A detailed site investigation had revealed the original scheme would cost much more than first thought, and building it mainly on shore would be cheaper and quicker.
Mr McBride called for an inquiry into these circumstances and for the original international design competition to be re-run.
He now believes the reason for the changed site may lie in Dundee City Council’s approval last week for the £8.5 million compulsory purchase payment for the leases of the Hilton and Gala Casinos, east of the V&A, to allow the waterfront development to proceed.
Speaking in a personal capacity, he asked: ”Is the massive cost of paying off the Hilton being subsidised by the V&A building moving back? The original site investigation should have worked out the details of building half of the V&A over the river, so how can it now be that the £45 million costing is so wrong?
”Then last week we were told that the council is having to find £8.5 million for the Hilton and Gala sites. Was this just a coincidence? To many people it will look like Peter, in the form of the V&A, is being robbed to pay Paul in the form of the Hilton and Gala Casino.”
Mr McBride is also troubled by the new site being promoted when it hasn’t gone for a planning permission, and added: ”The original plan was the people’s choice. It was heralded with much trumpeting from politicians locally, from Holyrood and Westminster.
”Their trumpet blasts seem to have fallen silent. We must not allow this departure from the original iconic plan to be swept under the pier.”
Mr McBride suggested that if the powers that be wish to involve the citizens of Dundee not forgetting residents of Angus, Fife and Perthshire they should be following national standards for community engagement, which are readily available on the Scottish Government’s website.
He added: ”I invite everyone to make their views known by bombarding Dundee City Council’s planning department and the V&A in Dundee with emails or letters of protest.”
In his first salvo, Mr McBride suggested the entire design competition should be re-run to allow the international field of architects, who had to follow cost, timescale and site guidelines, to submit plans for the changed site.
Mike Galloway, director of city development, said: ”There is absolutely no link between the proposed move of the V&A at Dundee site and budgets for that project, and the payment for the land at the Hilton/Gala Casino site. To suggest otherwise is nothing more than misplaced and misguided speculation.
”The purchase cost of the Hilton/Gala site was always included within the Waterfront Project budget and no other project has had to be amended or dropped to accommodate that expenditure.”
He expected there will be a revised planning notice for the V&A, which will be open to public consultation.
West End Community Council will be one of the statutory consultees as the V&A site spreads into its area.