One of Aberdeen’s largest charities has announced it is planning to build a £2.6m Multi Resource Centre at Beach Boulevard.

Inspire (formerly Partnership Housing) aims to offer opportunities for an excellent quality of life to people with learning disabilities in North East Scotland.  Inspire currently has its offices at Old Stoneywood Church but is expecting to move into its purpose-built premises, designed by Space Solutions, during 2007.

With satellite offices in Elgin, Huntly, Ellon and Inverurie, the charity supports people all over the City and Shire, providing small scale permanently staffed housing, as well as various community support initiatives and respite care.

Despite having 65 of these service initiatives and a staff team of almost 600 staff, the charity is not especially well known.  Chief Executive, Catriona McPhee-Smith explains why.  “Since 1990 we’ve grown phenomenally and have been concentrating on providing excellent and progressive services for people with learning disabilities. However we recognise that we need to increase our profile with the general public and promote the extensive work that we do in the North East. We are currently rebranding to assist in this process – Watch this space!”

The new premises, designed by Space Solutions will provide a multi resource centre, including an eatery, enabling facilities, meeting and conferencing facilities for external hire and office accommodation arranged over 3 floors.

Ms McPhee-Smith continues, “We met Space Solutions over 18 months ago and started to talk to them about our aspirations – for a long time this has been tagged “The Dream” - because that’s exactly what it has been.  The whole process seemed quite daunting, but we forged a solid relationship with Space who clearly had a lot of empathy with the project and were keen to work very closely with us to ensure they had a very thorough understanding of our needs before the design process began”

Steve Judge, Managing Director of Space Solutions is keen to point out just how crucial it was to be involved very early on.  “As with any project, the quality of the design is entirely down to how well we understand our client’s needs, their culture, and the drivers of that particular organisation.  This is a very important project for us because it’s unique in its requirement and as a result involves many skills.”

Partnership has involved many people from all the stakeholder groups to ensure the service provision on the ground floor was absolutely right.  “The research exercise took over a year” explained Ms McPhee-Smith “But it was crucial to do it.  In particular, we wanted to speak to service users who have so many ideas and to the staff who are absolutely central to making this organisation what it is.”

The building, covering an area of some 12,000sq ft aims to incorporate a number of facilities enabling service users to further skills development and pursue employment opportunities.  In addition there will be a recreation facility, available to the general public for drama, dance and music as well as the more traditional exercise groups.

The eatery will provide even more choice for diners in the area, numbers of whom have grown over the last year as the developments by George Wimpey and Stewart Milne have been completed.  “The eatery is yet to be named” explained Partnership, “but it will provide something a little different to outlets at the beach.  In fact we expect that both local residents and business folk will find this will give them somewhere different to try.”

The project will take around 11 months to complete and is expected to open during 2007.