The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Perth enjoys property lift
Efforts by council show positive impact
Despite Perth losing out on the City of Culture 2021 bid, the local authority committed to promises made during the bid process.
Some of these efforts are already showing a positive impact in the city’s commercial property sector.
The £20 million redevelopment of Perth City Hall as a visual arts centre is expected to start in 2019 and take two years to complete.
This will add to the cultural offerings in the city, with Perth Concert Hall and the recently reopened Perth Theatre seeing a transformation of Mill Street and the cultural quarter, which is unrecognisable from a few years ago.
Perth’s retail property sector has been fairly positive through late 2017 and early this year with Beales reopening the former McEwens department store on St John Street and work progressing well on the expansion of St Catherines Retail Park.
Work is being carried out on a new cinema and shopping complex, known as the Mill Quarter, at Thimblerow, which will add to the improvements in this area of the city centre.
On the western edge of the city the Broxden area has seen major new commercial operators putting the finishing touches to their developments with Broxden Farm, a new family carvery restaurant owned by Greene King, opening and a neighbouring drive-through Costa Coffee set to open in the coming weeks.
Peter Vardy has completed its new Porsche showroom adjacent to these leisure operators, adding to a mix of modern office buildings and a dental hospital in the immediate area to create a unique development fronting on to the major road junction at Broxden.
To the north-west of the city, residential development is pushing forward and visible improvements to the road infrastructure have been taking shape.
These changes will facilitate the ambitious Bertha Park plan, and have allowed land to the west of Inveralmond Industrial Estate to be brought to the market, relieving pressure on a buoyant industrial market in Perth, where development and yard space is becoming harder to source.