Plans to construct a multiplex cinema on a vacant web site in Dundee city centre are on maintain – and have been for a number of months, the Tele understands.
Ayrshire-based builders Crucible Alba Group unveiled their proposals for a 9-display cinema and a resort and restaurant complicated on Greenmarket in early 2018.
At the time, the agency stated it had entered into negotiations with numerous theatre chains and eateries to occupy the £24 million facility, which was to be constructed all through final 12 months.
Michael Smart, growth director at Crucible Alba, beforehand recommended the event would act as “the final piece in the jigsaw” linking the city centre to the Waterfront.
But up to now, there was no progress on the positioning – and sources recommend little progress has been made behind the scenes both.
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Crucible Alba’s Brian Robinson, Alex Steel and Michael Smart with the Greenmarket plans.
While Crucible Alba says the proposal stays lively, it has been recommended that the challenge might be known as off because of difficult buying and selling conditions for chain eating places throughout the UK.
A supply with information of the challenge stated: “There’s been no exercise on it (the challenge) for months.
“It’s being reviewed – each by way of discovering companions and whether or not it should even go forward in any respect.
“There isn’t a great deal of confidence in the Dundee marketplace in terms of restaurant chains.”
No formal planning utility has ever been submitted to Dundee City Council.
A spokesman for Crucible Alba stated: “Crucible Alba Group are continuing discussions with various stakeholders, potential occupiers and reviewing suggestions made at the public consultation, before finalising their proposals for the site at Greenmarket.”
Dundee skilled a flurry of recent chain eatery openings within the construct-as much as the opening of V&A Dundee in September 2018.
Five Guys, Frankie and Benny’s, Tony Macaroni, Mozza, Patisserie Valerie, German Doner Kebab are among the many massive names to have opened up in Dundee lately.
They helped to contribute to a £43 million increase within the native food and drinks trade within the area of a 12 months.
Cheers! Dundee’s food and drinks trade grows by £43m in simply ONE YEAR
The Greenmarket plans have themselves confirmed contentious since they had been first introduced in March 2018.
The presence of a multiplex cinema within the again backyard of the Dundee Contemporary Arts set off alarm bells with artwork centre bosses, who relayed their considerations to MSPs in July the identical 12 months.
Local arts collective Creative Dundee additionally warned that the multiplex would trigger “serious difficulties” for the DCA, which screens a choice of massive movies alongside impartial flicks.
The cinema made 1 / 4 of its revenue, nearly £500,000, from 93,000 cinema guests in 2018/19 – a determine that might doubtless be impacted by the presence of a big multiplex subsequent door.
Art centre bosses have made no secret of their reliance on mainstream movies to spice up the centre’s coffers. The hottest screenings final 12 months included blockbusters A Star Is Born, Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again, Bohemian Rhapsody, Avengers: Infinity War and Deadpool 2.
Dundee Civic Trust, which additionally opposes the cinema facet of the plan, believes Dundee is overprovided for silver screens, with twice as many screens per head as in Edinburgh.
If the plans are in the end consigned to the scrapheap as has been recommended, it will be the second time in latest reminiscence that this has occurred.
A transformative imaginative and prescient for the Wellgate that might have concerned English cinema chain The Light Cinemas was dropped after the centre skilled a turbulent interval which noticed it lose BHS and welcome gymnasium chain Xercise4Less within the cinema’s place.
THE END: Dundee buying centre’s eight-display cinema dream over after talks collapse
