Aberdeen council chiefs have abandoned plans to build the city’s fourth all-purpose sports pitch on Kincorth Field after a year-long campaign from local residents to move the project. Instead, the authority will now push ahead with talks on an unused bowling green beside Kincorth Sports Centre as the possible home for the proposed Cruyff Court.
The decision was taken at a meeting of the finance and resources committee earlier today, after councillors backed the community request before the session got underway. Council chiefs have been ordered to enter talks with Sport Aberdeen and produce a business case for converting the former bowling green into 3G and 4G pitches with multi-sport facilities. Finance chief councillor Alex McLellan said the committee wants the work to come back as soon as August.
Last March, Aberdeen council chiefs unveiled the Kincorth Field plan as part of a wider pitch project, but the community argued the site was wrong for the court and pressed for the disused bowling green instead. Their case has now won out, with the local authority agreeing to take those views on board and stop moving ahead with the Kincorth Field proposal.
Dani Kindness, a coach with Kincorth Youth Football and Champion Street, attended the meeting to urge councillors to shift the court. She said the ground in question is already central to local sport and daily life, saying it is where the Kincorth Amateurs football team play and where children play. McLellan said the business case should include options for 3G and 4G pitches and multi-sports facilities, and added that the key issue is community access first.
He also said councillors would need to examine how any new facility is run, whether it is a paid-for pitch operated by Sport Aberdeen or something closer to the original Cruyff Court plan. For Kincorth, the fight was never just about where to put a pitch. It was about whether the only remaining patch of green space in the area should give way to a new one, or whether the council would listen and build elsewhere.
