Gladman news

Community backs proposed £18m investment to bring 550 full-time new jobs and 300 construction jobs to this prominent Kingsway location

Gladman Developments, the owners of Dundee Business Park, on the former 10 acre Valentine's factory fronting Dundee's Kingsway, has now completed its consultations with the local community for this mixed use development.

The plans include the construction of a further 13 office pavilions providing 30,000 sqft of office space in addition to the four existing pavilions currently completed. The rest of the site is for a proposed mixed use development consisting of a 20,000 sqft cash and carry, 33,500 sqft of showrooms and associated autocare services plus a four storey 95 bed hotel with associated restaurant/pub facilities.

Gladman acquired the site in 2007 and the following year was granted planning permission for 140,000 sqft of office space. Work started on site the same year with an initial phase of 15,000 sqft being completed. Although some of this space has been let to successful businesses, the market for such premises has been severely affected and the associated drop in values means that speculative office development is no longer viable in isolation.

Commenting on last week's consultation exercise, Greg Limb, a Partner with Gladman, said:

"Our local consultations confirm we have general support for our plans and, just as importantly, little or no opposition to our proposals. At a public exhibition last Thursday held at Lochee Housing Office we were able to explain our proposals to members of the public, to some of the local elected members as well as a number of key stakeholders including Jobcentre Plus Dundee. The overall turn-out was low, suggesting that there was little or no objection to our plans but from those people attending we were given 100% support. The details of this consultation which has been widely advertised and covered in the media, will be summarised for a Pre Application Consultation Report to accompany our application which we expect to be lodged with Dundee City Council by June.

Encouragingly we have received various enquiries from end users interested in our mixed use development proposals and together with our agents, Graham & Sibbald, Ryden and Knight Frank, we look forward to progressing these and any other notes of interest.

We still welcome further comments on our website www.gladman.co.uk/dundee-consultation until the end of May."