Overgate Centre

Overgate as viewed from the City Square entrance

The main glass-fronted portion of the Overgate Centre seen here was entirely rebuilt at the turn of the millennium.

The Overgate Centre is a shopping centre in Dundee, Scotland. Built in the 1960s to replace buildings erected in the 18th and 19th centuries, much of the original structure (e.g. the Angus Hotel) was demolished and redeveloped from 1998-2000.

The centre reopened as a fully enclosed shopping mall in 2000 and follows the same basic structure as the 1960s layout. It is the only single-sided shopping mall in Europe. Two levels of retail units are enclosed by a long curved glass elevation looking out to the historic City Churches where a pedestrian precinct remains. It houses over 60 shops, cafes and restaurants as well as three car parks, two being multi-storey. The flagship stores are Debenhams, which is the only store that spans three floors, situated at the west end, and Primark at the opposite end.

The £50m expansion

In 2006, permission was granted to expand and, in 2008, Dundee City Council moved tenants out of flats next to the centre to facilitate the project. Demolition commended in May/June 2009. The £50,000,000 expansion is intended to double the size of the centre and to include 50 new shops and a food court. The plans were put 'on hold' in September 2009 due to the recession with work is to possibly commence mid-2013 or early 2014. On December 17, 2010, Land Securities took over the running and ownership of the Overgate Centre from Lend Lease at a cost of £141 million.

Historical Background

The centre is located where, until the 1960s, there was a street called the 'Overgate'. The street ran from the corner of Reform Street to North Lindsay Street, passing along the north side of St Mary's Parish Church. The Overgate was also once intersected by Tally Street which acted as important connection from Couttie's Wynd to Burial Wynd (now Barrack Street). The 'gate' in Overgate comes from the Old Norse word 'gata' meaning road or street and has the same origins as the word gait meaning to walk. The street was referred to as 'Overgate' because it was the higher of the two roads running alongside the City Churches, the other being called the Nethergate (i.e. lower road). Gate and gait can often be found in historic and modern street names mostly meaning the same thing and Dundee's city centre retains several streets of a similar name: Nethergate, Cowgate, Seagate, Murraygate, Wellgate and Marketgait. The Overgate's old and dilapidated properties were deemed 'slums' in the early 20th Century. James Thomson proposed their clearance in his city plan of 1910. A similar proposal came in the form of the Adams Plan of 1937; this did not progress due to the outbreak of the Second World War.

The 1960s Overgate Centre was a mixed-use development comprising hotel and offices to the west (fronting West Marketgait), a pedestrian precinct (incorporating an upper tier of shops) facing the City Churches;and anchor stores / covered mall to the east (to Reform Street). It was designed by Ian Burke, Hugh Martin & Partners in 1963 and hailed as the first comprehensive town-centre development of its type in Scotland. It included public sculpture panels in concrete and painted steel (depicting women in traditional market scenes) by Ian Eadie. It also had a roof-top car park accessed from Lindsay Street. Abandoned by the more fashionable chainstores when the Wellgate Centre (an enclosed mall) opened in 1978, it became much neglected and run-down within a decade. Attempts at refurbishment by replacing concrete panels with decorative steel were rejected in favour of comprehensive redevelopment.

Stores

Below are just a few of the many stores, For a full updated list visit the Store Finder
As of January 2014 ;
Argos, Boots, H&M, La Senza, New Look, Next, Primark, Superdrug, W H Smith

External links

• Overgate Official Site