A retail unit which lay vacant in Dundee city centre for more than seven years is owned by Dundee City Council.
The building at 7 Castle Street had been unoccupied since October 2016 before it was taken over by Creative Dundee earlier this year on a short-term basis.
An investigation by The Courier into who owns the long-term vacant retail units on the high street revealed that the building belongs to Dundee City Council who first registered it in 1999.
When The Courier purchased the property deeds of 18 long-term vacant units in early February the building was still empty.
It was the property which had remained unoccupied the third longest within the city centre having been empty for 7.4 years after Keiller’s China Shop moved out.
The Courier has been tracking empty retail units for almost a year.
Council blames Covid for empty building
The council say they tried to market the property but the Covid-19 pandemic delayed renovations to the unit.
The lockdown resulting from the coronavirus outbreak began more than three years after the shop was last in use.
A Dundee City Council spokesperson said: “The property was in need of refurbishment after it was vacated, but due to the impact of Covid this work was delayed and was not completed until December 2022.
“The council actively marketed the property since then, but there are challenges facing city centres across the UK regarding the leasing of vacant retail units.
“Creative Dundee is now being supported by the city council to use it as the first part of its Hapworks initiative.”
‘They made us rip the floors up’
The former tenant of 7 Castle Street claims the council made them rip up the floors before they vacated the premises.
David Farry, owner of Keillers China Shop, say the local authority priced them out of the unit.
He told The Courier: “They wanted to put the rent up and rates are a problem in the city centre.
“They made us rip the floors up, we had to rip out CCTV.
“If we had left the floors then someone else could have moved right in.”
Mr Farry, who now runs his business out of a premises on Seagate, say that moving property cost the business a lot of money.
He said: “At the time they wanted Castle Street to be a main thoroughfare to the V&A but they wouldn’t give us any help.
“We had that shop looking nice.”
When asked about Mr Farry’s claims, a spokesperson for Dundee City Council said: “We do not comment on commercially sensitive information.”
Positive signs for vacant lets
Creative Dundee took over temporary occupancy of the unit in February but will vacate it again in May.
They believe that a lack of spaces is curtailing the city’s creative sector.
Creative Dundee say: “We are using this unit to pilot an adaptable space which offers creative coworking alongside an events programme.
“Hapworks_00 is a platform to test new ways of working, share our long term ambition for a permanent space, and launch the next stage of the project.”
The council-owned building is not the only long-term vacant unit to come back into use since The Courier acquired the property deeds.
The property at 19 Commercial Street, the former home of Dundee Design Project, had been empty for almost five years since it was vacated in June 2019.
But in March it was taken over by 31-year-old entrepreneur Jack Shiffers who lives in Kinross.
Inspired by online second-hand clothes stores he opened Thrift City, which sells kilo bundles of pre-owned clothes, shoes and accessories.
The addition of the shop is a boost for Commercial Street which, according to The Courier’s retail tracker, has the biggest vacancy rate of any of the main shopping streets in Dundee at more than 35%.
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