Hopes for city centre’s future

The joy of forging social contacts while out and about in the various shops that populate Dundee city centre was a theme explored in yesterday’s Craigie by Stanley Gordon.

Today the retired Newport-on-tay resident continues his thoughtful look at the changing face of the city’s retail sector – large and small – starting with a jaunt along a well-trodden throughfare that is famously bookended by the important and iconic landmarks that are Dundee High School and City Square.

Mr Gordon writes: “Reform Street looks very rundown nowadays and hugely changed from when I used to make my way to work – it was very upmarket and vibrant and, on bright and sunny days, I felt as if I was in a busy scene from a Doris Day movie.

“However, I do always feel all the better after a visit to the Turkish barber in Reform Street and then look forward to lunch in the Mcmanus cafe with its friendly staff and regular customers, and it’s also a great place to meet up with friends.

“I often see kenspeckle faces whilst walking through the centre of town and it’s nice to pass the time of day catching up with their news. The Wellgate Centre has lost a lot of the familiar stores, such as BHS, but I still find it useful for essentials and the staff are friendly in the shops that I frequent.”

However, he adds: “On a less positive note, M&S will be sadly missed when the store is relocated to the retail park, especially after being established in Murraygate for so many years.

“It is also sad that the ironmongers in Peter Street is due to close at the end of March; both businesses were ideally situated near to the bus station and bus stops in Seagate.”

Summing up his tour of the city’s main shopping streets as they are now, Stanley says he can’t but help cast his mind back to Dundee’s glory days in decades past.

He ends: “One can only hope that things will begin to improve in the near future. I’m certainly glad to have been around when the town centre was a thriving hub – happy days.”

Scone can just about be made out in this photo taken east of Perth near Deuchny Wood.