Dundee groups will see an “emergence” of the Eden Project in the city in 2023, according to a senior member of the charity behind it.
Blair Parkin is Eden Project head of experience development.
He said the charity is set to open a Dundee office during 2023, bringing with it new jobs.
It will be “a place to create a place”.
He added: “Nothing beats a place where you can invite the community in to see where you’re at.”
The charity will also get back in touch, early in 2023, with the many local groups it has been working with on shaping the overall design.
But Blair also acknowledged his team are working in the context of rising inflation. He would only confirm his team are “on target” for an opening date around four years from now.
He said: “Everyone wants to know what the opening date is. We’ve had a huge process going on for the past two years, talking to people.
“Then no one has heard anything from us for the last six months. Which has been on purpose. We have been working to create what our vision for the project is going to be.
“There have also been commercial discussions with landowners, and these things take a bit of time.
“But what you will see from us in 2023, the project will emerge for co-creation with the community. We’ll bring our ideas to the table in the early part of next year.”
New Eden Project in Dundee ‘on target’
He expects it will then be another year before project bosses can apply for planning permission.
And construction is predicted to take between 12 and 24 months after that process concludes.
“I don’t think any of us predicted the pandemic, war in Europe, or any of those things. But yet we’ve managed to keep the project on the timetable through the pandemic.
“And we are on target,” he added.
The charity’s ideas remain as ambitious and potentially transformative for the city as when Eden announced them back in 2020.
The former Dundee gas works remains the favoured site. The Eden Project remain in negotiations to “take ownership”.
Blair said some of the most recent designs centre around the “giant 62 metre” gas holder. That is the cylindrical tower next to the A92 as it passes through city.
Designers hope this will become a “giant planted” exhibit – working title The Lush Bunker – using dark spaces at the bottom of the holder and then walkways across the top to tell the story of climate change.
“We’re going to transform it from being an unloved piece of industrial legacy into an amazing experience,” he added.
Gas works clean up ‘pretty much there’
Sites used for gas manufacture historically can be heavily polluted. But The Courier understands much of the clean up work in Dundee is already complete.
Blair suggested he couldn’t comment in detail, but said the site is “pretty much there”.
“I’m not a remediation engineer, nor am I a gas works expert. But the land owners [SGN and National Grid] have been continually working to decommission, make safe and then make good, for the last few years.
“As far as our consultants are concerned, the site is a safe site. We wouldn’t be able to work with it if it wasn’t.”
Conversation