If there was a register of bullied buildings in Scotland, Tayside House would surely top the list. It has been harshly targeted for nearly 40 years. Countless unkind words hurled its way.
Now, not even at its demise can we afford it a dignified exit. No spectacular explosion and collapse like an unwanted multi.Just the humiliation of being stripped and ripped down floor by floor.
Decades of public service overlooked as its death becomes a public spectacle.
Unmourned and soon to be forgotten. What a sad way to live and die. What is it about this structure, topped out only 38 years ago, that has attracted such ill will?
Some who worked there loved it. It was designed to be almostself-heating, green before its time. Its construction kept local builders ticking over in bleak economic times. So why the animosity?
Did it represent the loss of independence by Perthshire and Kinross-shire, Angus and the City of Dundee when some localpowers were ceded to the new Tayside Regional Council?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=pYDZZxfOIDw%3Flist%3DUUvYN4-RH1dbFRLciVUpS7mw
Did we see it as an intruder, standing on what was once the old Earl Grey dock, straining the city’s link with its maritime heritage?
Or did we unconsciously associate its creation with a time when regional government began to seem spendthrift and out of touch?
It cost Ravenstone Securities Limited and Guardian Royal Exchange £3.5 millionto build. TRC agreed a 63-year lease at £300,000 a year.
So far so good.
But soon it emerged the council was to spend £1.5mfurnishing it, an outrageous amount.
When rate payers drilled down, they found a £9,000 bill for 40 typewriters £225 in 1975 money or £2,300 each at today’s prices.
TRC then confirmed it had spent £180,000 on furniture from a West German firm.
MP Gordon Wilson demanded to know why local firms had been given no chance to bid. He cited a Broughty Ferry firm, who had just supplied Grampian Regional Council with their furniture.
The answer from the council was they needed the furniture in a hurry and were unaware of Tayside firms who could supply the required quantity in the required timescale.
In December 1975, months before it opened, the council announced it was consideringflexi time working because the 1,000 staff could not all get in the building at the same time because of limited access.
Theimpression of folly was setting in.
An invasion of bugs and outbreaks of throat problems dogged staff in the 1980s. Then, in 1992, TRC looked even more remote when it brought in a smoking ban for everyone but councillors.
But the building functioned broadly as it was expected to. What tarnished its image was not its brash design but the insensitive decision making by those inside.
Might we have felt differently if, instead of a tunnel to spirit staff inside, it had been built with a large public entrance, designed to welcome rather than alienate those who were footing the bill?
But that was not the fault of the building…