Dundee property developer Derek Souter moved his business in next door to St Roque’s Library (AKA Reading Rooms) in 1995.
So he’s had a solid 30 years of looking out at the Blackscroft building, envisioning what he’d do with it.
“I used to be an advertising guy, for many, many years,” explains Derek, 66, as he shows me around the site on a crisp February morning.
“But I got older, and I moved into property.”
Derek’s business, Blackscroft Property Co, bought St Roque’s Library in 2008.
At that time, it was the home of cult Dundee nightclub Reading Rooms; a phrase which is inscribed in the stonework above the door of the 20th century library.
In 2019, Reading Rooms (the club) closed its doors.
“Reading Rooms was never going to survive on just two days a week,” Derek says.
“Jim and Grant Grieves, who managed the club nights, were great guys. But they couldn’t come to terms with the fact that the building had to make money the other five days.”
Images revealed boutique hotel plan
In late 2024, The Courier revealed Derek’s plans to develop St Roque’s Library (to give it its Sunday name) into a boutique restaurant with hotel rooms above it.
Like many Courier readers, I’ve seen the plans. But I had trouble envisioning how they’d come together in real life, so Derek invited me down for a look.
My first thought? I don’t think I’ve ever looked at it in the daylight.
It’s beautiful.
“The plan was always to put an extension on the roof,” explains Derek as we survey the outside of the building.
It’s clear the roof would need to be replaced anyway, so I can see the “two birds, one stone” logic here.
“I always thought you could do something with that roof space. You could get maybe five or six rooms up there.”
Could Blackscroft become tourism quarter?
Derek explains that he sees the development as a “complement” to the “gorgeous” Hotel Indigo complex across the road.
“This wouldn’t really be a competitor, so much as a adjunct to what’s already going on along here,” he says.
“You have places like the Grampian Hotel in the west end, where check in and check out is all contactless. Easy.
“It would just be a few extra rooms available near where people are already coming to stay.”
Derek sees Blackscroft as having great potential for tourism, especially with the projected arrival of the new Eden Project on the other side of it in 2030.
“There’s this idea that people are going to walk along Dock Street and go across a bridge by City Quay to get to the Eden Project,” he says.
“But people coming from this side of town are going to go along past here. The buses stop right outside.
“So people coming via the Gallagher Retail Park can come off the bus, stop in here for a coffee or a light bite.”
What will old public toilets become?
He observes that if Dundee and Angus College’s plan to regenerate the Wellgate site goes ahead, “the city centre will be flattened and stretched” so that “all the way along here becomes city centre”.
On the left of the building (from the road) he points out a space where there could be “20-odd car parking spaces”.
And as well as the restaurant and rooms, Derek tells me there’ll be a bar too – in the garden.
“Below our feet here is an old set of public toilets,” he explains as we stand on a sheet of Astroturf on the south side of the garden.
“The idea is to convert them to be a cellar, from which the bar can be serviced. Like Mennies (Speedwell Bar) on the Perth Road has.”
New lease of life for iconic fountain
He tells me that the garden – which I remember as the ‘smoking area’ of the old nightclub’ – has had all the trees removed, which Derek says was a necessary part of the £150K worth of secondary works to prepare the site for its future use.
“The trees had to go because the tree roots had actually distorted the whole wall. The wall had to be rebuilt.”
But there’s been a concerted effort to retain as much of the original character and as many original features of the library and garden as possible, says Derek.
The iconic Reading Rooms fountain, which once sat in the centre of the garden, has been dismantled.
But Derek shows me where it’s being stored at a brownfield site along the road, and says he hopes to put it back, front and centre, so that it’s the first thing people see when coming over the prow towards the building.
“It’ll be a feature when you come along the road, you’ll have the fountain lit up and this regeneration will be a point of pride.”
What was it like being back in ‘Rooms’?
As well as the garden wall and fountain, the building itself will have several features preserved – including the outside stonework and the window frames.
“We’re keeping the original walls, the existing windows will get taken away and treated and then put back in. Otherwise it’s a straight refurb.”
As we head inside, I’m struck by just how spacious the place is. I’ve only ever been here as a punter when it was strobe-lit and crammed with dancing bodies.
Remnants of the building’s club legacy linger still.
A wall collaged with old posters is the singular pop of colour amid the greys and whites of renewal.
And on the door to the old toilets (the smell of which will never leave me) there remains a sheet of printer paper requesting: “NO DRINKS OUTSIDE. THANK YOU.”
How Derek is ‘selling the sizzle’
But St Roque’s library has grandeur befitting of a new lease of life.
At the time of my visit, there’s not much to see except potential. The floors and walls are stripped bare.
One of the huge window frames is laid out on the floor, twice as tall as me at least.
Sunlight streams in from all sides, and I can picture a sleek, airy dining room filled with delicious smells.
But the piece de resistance is revealed when Derek opens up the west-facing side doors, revealing a view of the garden steps and beyond, where the fountain will sit, beautifully framed by symmetrical stonework.
For Derek, this is the “wedding view” which he feels could elevate the building from hotel to destination.
This is what he calls “selling the sizzle” (he is open to a joint venture with an organisation who would run the business) and I can certainly see the vision.
“Any guy of a certain age could look at that view and imaging walking his daughter down the aisle right there,” he says.
“There’s no other place in Dundee with this view.”
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