The Overgate and Wellgate shopping centres have been a massive part of the Dundee retail economy for decades.
Between them they contain some of Dundee’s most popular places to shop, eat, and work out – but how are they faring against the increasing pressures of the cost of living crisis?
The Courier data team set out to quantify the effect on the Dundee retail footprint by creating maps of all of the shopping centres and carrying out a census of the activity in each area.
We plan to track these centres long term to keep a finger on the pulse of the Dundee high street economy. All of the data in this article is current to the best of our knowledge. If you have any more up to date information, please get in touch at datateam@dcthomson.co.uk.
The chart below shows the overall vacancy rate at both shopping centres.
As well as vacancy levels, we will also be keeping track of the kind of units (shopping, food and drink etc) found within each centre.
Further analysis of this data can be found here.
Overgate Shopping Centre
The Overgate was originally built in the 60s and redeveloped in 1998 to the layout we are familiar with today. It can be found on Nethergate, right in the heart of the city centre.
The centre was recently acquired by Mike Ashley, owner of Frasers Group plc.
The interactive floor plan below shows information on the current activity within the Overgate. Hover over a unit for further information.
Wellgate Shopping Centre
The Wellgate opened in 1978 and was an instant hit with shoppers. The entrance can be found on Panmure Street, just at the end of Murraygate.
The Wellgate has three floors which contain retail units.
The interactive floor plan of floor one is below. Hover over a unit for further information.
The interactive floor plan of floor two is below. Hover over a unit for further information.
The interactive floor plan of floor three is below. Hover over a unit for further information.
Vacant unit summary
We catalogued whether a unit was occupied or not and if it was occupied, the type of retail activity the space is being used for. Where we discovered that a unit was vacant, we tried to ascertain the length of time the space had been unoccupied.
We did this by checking the social media accounts of the business, checking Courier reporting, looking for the business status on Companies House, looking for changes to signage on google street view history and in some cases by checking for signs in the windows of the premises.
Because of the subjectivity of the sources, the number of days vacant should be treated as approximate. If you have any more up to date information for our records, please get in touch.
There are also some unoccupied units where we were unable to locate the closure date, so these are not included in our breakdown of the longest vacant units.
You can view our Dundee high street shop tracker here.
Methodology
An initial in person census was carried out in May and June of 2023, and then again in November of 2023.
You can read our latest analysis of the changes to the high streets and shopping centres here.
We need your help!
All of the data in our shopping centre tracker is collected manually by the Courier data team. We continuously update the data whenever we notice any changes but it’s possible we may miss something.
We appreciate all the support we’ve received for our trackers so far, and would love if you would like to help us keep it up to date.
If there’s anything you spot opening or closing you’d like us to know about, or if you have more accurate information on closing dates of units or what the last business to occupy a unit was, you can let us know using the form below.
