Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Forgotten £75m plan for a fourth city shopping centre
DUNDEE council chiefs bidding to keep shoppers in the city in the 1980s planned a fourth shopping centre to add to the retail offering at the Overgate, Keiller and Wellgate centres.
Aided by a thinktank, officials looked at building a mall in the Seagate
Hillier Parker was commissioned to undertake a study in 1988, which showed Dundee was losing retail trade to other cities and towns.
The demand for larger retail shops was the foreseeable trend.
Investment was being hampered by the lack of opportunities to improve the prime shopping area and provide retailers with “shops of appropriate sizes”.
They reported back to councillors in April 1989 and proposed a £75m shopping centre in Seagate
The chartered surveyors suggested the money for the fourth shopping centre could be privately funded without the need for cash from taxpayers.
It was suggested new shops would be attracted to the area and present retailers would be encouraged to expand.
The aim was to make Dundee a shopping destination. There was the promise of 1,000 jobs and they envisaged the 300,000sq ft centre would contain a large department store, an extended Marks & Spencer and smaller shops.
The plan would have transformed a
large area from the south of Murraygate to Dock Street and Commercial Street to Allan Street. Gellatly Street would have disappeared.
It would have been slightly smaller than the Wellgate with parking for 1,800 vehicles.
Hillier Parker said “strong interest” in the concept had been found among top retailers.
The plan also called on the Overgate Centre owners to “refurbish it as soon as possible” while accepting its role would be a “secondary shopping area”.
Hillier Parker’s remit had not included designing the £75m mall so we have no idea how it would have looked, though they predicted opening by 1994.
But the Chamber of Commerce gave the idea the thumbs down. Director Harry Terrell said additional prime retail floor space was required but 30,000sq ft was “substantially in excess” of what should be provided.
Only a limited number of major stores were not already represented in the city.
Mr Terrell said it was likely most of the occupants of the proposed centre would relocate from within the city centre and not be replaced, “leaving a desert”.
Commercial property firm Land Securities was the owner of the Overgate Centre and was far from impressed.
A spokesman for the company said it was about to refurbish the Overgate.
It would now be considering its position following the report.
Tayside Regional Council reserved its
position until it had considered the public response and commissioned a household survey. The response in September 1990 found 41% of people felt the development would improve Dundee’s shopping centre. Some 28% believed it would not. A report by chief planning officer Alistair Barrie recommended the redevelopment of the Seagate to accommodate a “prime shopping area”.
It went to a vote in November 1990. The recommendation was opposed by SNP members Ken Guild and David Coutts who called for a six-month deferral.
Mr Guild said approving the report
would suggest a movement away from central shopping.
He called this a risky move when the Overgate was “struggling”.
Mr Guild’s motion to defer a decision was defeated by 12 votes to six.
Councillors agreed in principle for a development at Seagate “sometime in the future”. The public was told it could take 10 years to make the project a reality. A recession inevitably followed.
In July 1992 the Labour administration was seeking council approval for another shopping survey to “establish Dundee as a regional shopping centre”.
Ian Luke said it had become apparent over the past three years that circumstances in Dundee had changed because of the recession.
“The implications are that the Seagate, which was at the heart of the last Hillier Parker report, has now become a very distant prospect,” he said.
Hillier Parker was commissioned for the second time in five years and said the scheme was realistic in the buoyant market of Thatcherism but the current conditions were very different.
It did not believe the Seagate scheme could be realistically achieved.
Listed buildings, costs of acquisition, multiple ownership of properties and “significant physical problems” were among the “number of difficult issues”.
The Seagate proposal was quietly killed off and attention moved to the Overgate Centre, which was redeveloped and reopened in 2000.