The irony should be lost on no one. Anxious to secure the green light for a new £100 million stadium, Dundee’s quest for planning permission has been delayed by Transport Scotland, the agency charged with keeping the traffic moving.
To clear the gridlock the Dens Park club have turned to Hollywood royalty. Brian Cox is Dundee’s most famous son and, as frustration with the planning hold up grows, the Succession actor fronts up a new 90-second promotional video stating the case for building the kind of 12,500-seat multi-purpose arena of which Logan Roy himself might heartily approve.
Coy on his footballing allegiance Cox admits to being the cousin of Dundee’s iconic title-winning defender Bobby and was happy to lend his dulcet tones to an eight-year campaign tangled up in ribbons of red tape.
“It was great for Brian to do that,” says managing director John Nelms. “He comes back to Dundee Rep in July where my wife is the development director. Hopefully we’ll have some cup games for him to attend…”
For Dundee July was supposed to mark a new beginning. These were supposed to be their weeks at Dens Park, the crumbling 126-year-old stadium Nelms compares to the Forth Bridge. The instant the unique main stand – designed by Archibald Leitch – receives a lick of paint the time comes to start all over. Repair bills for the old place now cost the club £700,000 while the outlay of developing plans for the new stadium has already topped £3m.
Purchasing the land in 2016 Dark Blue Property Holdings, the company established by Nelms and his American co-owner Tim Keyes, applied for outline planning permission for a stadium featuring a home end safe-standing area, LED screens, a 1000-capacity multi-use venue, hospitality and a 250-capacity brew hall last year.
Progress remains grindingly slow, discussions with Transport Scotland over a suitable entrance to the new venue show no sign of reaching a satisfactory conclusion. After a fruitless exchange of letters an exasperated Nelms now expects Dundee to remain at Dens Park for the next two years at least and has written to First Minister John Swinney seeking a Scottish Government intervention.
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“I am a patient person but my patience is starting to wane,” states the former East Fife trialist.
“We have got to the point where we are working on a finer detail with Transport Scotland.
“That is the only detail left in this process so we can be heard by the councillors.”
The sticking point since the project started eight years ago has been a proposed entrance to the new arena labelled Option 5C.
“Transport Scotland said it was their preferred option at the time and it was what we have been working on ever since,” adds Nelms.
“In 2024, February, we put in the application with 5C in place and have done all our assessments on that.
“We have another option coming in and out of the sight and our teams have been working on those options.
“In order for us to take the next step we need to know what option we are going with.
“We have done everything we can. The Transport Scotland part is the last bit.”
Comparing the process to ‘going round in circles’ Nelms is anxious to climb off the hamster’s wheel, his exasperation heightened by the news of the University of Dundee – where his youngest son is a student – proposing to make 600 job cuts. With clouds gathering over the global economy the reticence to wave through a major new venue in a cash-strapped city remains a source of bemusement and growing frustration.
Son of a former US seaman who put harpoon missiles on submarines at Faslane between 1978 and 1981, Nelms spent those years as a child in Rhu. He returned to Scotland from Texas after a family summit in 2013. He remembers taking his wife Renee to piles of rubble on the waterfront but saw the city’s regeneration as an opportunity to create something and hopes it still could be.
“I am in my 13th year, Dundee City Council hasn’t really had a great budget. I don’t think it has ever been in the black, mostly in the red.
“We can help with that with that side of the project we have. It brings 400 construction jobs straight away and over 300 full-time jobs going into the Tayside area and adds £12 million to the economic value of Dundee city annually.
“The fact the university is losing staff, the budgets we have are tight and a bit upside down but we are here to help.
“We feel it should have started quite a while ago. All these things help the city of Dundee.
“We get passed over for concerts constantly because we don’t have a big enough venue
“We get passed over for conferencing because we don’t have the space at the top of the bell curve.
“Events and football, all the things we have put on the site, are based on the needs of the city.
“We are not asking for money from the city or for the government.
“Although with the economic impact this has and the big uplift it has then I am surprised they are not coming to us and asking how they can help and get things over the line.”
