| The university’s court and sub-committees, at a series of meetings starting around lunchtime, considered the case for staying in the city centre or finding a new site or sites elsewhere — even if it means leaving the city that has been its home for more than a century.
Principal Bernard King and his colleagues on the governing body are not thought likely today to come to a hard and fast decision about a site where the university should be based.
It is thought that from a list of options, they will choose some to be given continued consideration and some to be discarded.
Abertay created a stir last month by the disclosure the university could quit the city. University leaders were unhappy at the failure of a planning application for an £18 million, 500-bed accommodation block for students, a short distance from the campus at Parker Street.
They had spent £1 million preparing their bid for a new student village — a central part of the estates strategy — and had been encouraged by the city council into believing it would be approved, but it was rejected by councillors.
The rejection triggered a review of the university’s whole estates strategy, given the university is expanding, it needs more space and many of its existing residences are approaching the end of their lives.
Court and committee members’ options include finding another central site for a 500-bed accommodation block or building a smaller block in the city centre and developing a new site for teaching, research and student accommodation elsewhere in the city to give Abertay two campuses in Dundee.
They could also enter an agreement with a landlord to provide student residences near to the Bell Street campus which would allow Abertay to stay in the city centre, or decide to move Abertay to a single, all-purpose new site in Dundee.
Controversially, the university has also approached the councils in Perth and Kinross and Fife to find out if there are sites in their areas to which the university could be moved.
Professor Nicholas Terry, the deputy principal who has played a leading role in the deliberations, spelled out a month ago that the possibility of leaving Dundee was no idle threat.
He stated, “Should the university come to the conclusion that its best interests are served by looking for a location outside Dundee or an alternative location in Dundee, I have every confidence the university would have the courage to take that decision.” |
