Naked City: The fightback of Edinburgh's Westside Centre

The Herald Scotland

7 hours ago

This wee al fresco aroma emporium greets you at the entrance to Wester Hailes' Westside shopping plaza. I've seen a lot worse in gateways to an urban shopping centre across the UK.
The Westside, formerly known as the Plaza has attained semi-legendary status in the day-to-day lives of the local citizenry. It was opened in 1974 at a time when these retail malls were beginning to appear across the UK, driven by how seductively they appeared in American television shows.
Within a decade though, some of them slipped into a state of decrepitude, often characterised by anti-social behaviour public drunkenness and drug-taking. They were where you went if you were dodging school or attempting some casual shop-lifting. This one in Wester Hailes suffered more than most, not helped by retailers upping sticks at the first hint of economic decline.
The wider Wester Hailes community meanwhile had become fixed in the public eye as an exemplar of social deprivation throughout the 1980s and locals began to avoid the Plaza as the dealers and jaikies moved in. It forced the old Scottish Office to intervene in 1990 with the establishment of the Wester Hailes Partnership to address urban decay. It included £17m investment in the shopping centre and its change of name to the Westside Plaza.
And then, in a bizarre legal dispute, one of Scotland's most senior judges intervened to force a major supermarket to stay in the Wester Hailes shopping centre. Safeway had wanted to pull out of the Plaza but Lord Penrose blocked the move.
It seems that this was the 'anchor' retailer whose presence had enticed other retailers to invest in the centre. The landlords of the property had sought an injunction to prevent Safeway from walking away, knowing that it would start a domino effect.
Since then its fortunes have ebbed and flowed. It's recently been placed under new management and had another name change to the Westside Centre, 'Plaza' perhaps having become one of those words now forever trapped in the 1990s like 'bling' and 'chillax'.
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New ownership has come with a cash injection of around £4m and regrettably, the inclusion of the word 're-imagined' which really ought to be banned, along with 'hub'. Indeed this errant pair of inelegant locutions appear on the first page of the website which tells the locals about their 'community hub re-imagined'.
You've got to admire the enthusiasm. I'd been advised not to raise my expectations but if I'm being honest, this is a fine retail emporium, and far better than others I've inspected throughout Britain.
Westside Plaza shopping centre (Image: GordonTerris)
Okay, so there are several units and outlets which seem always to be a feature of malls in edgy conurbations. Here we have your Wow Desserts sitting beside Farm Foods. Why are there always dessert emporium in places like this? I don't want to cast any aspersions on the business model, but few of them remain extant for long, so you can draw your own conclusions. The British Heart Foundation is handily placed adjacent to it, though.
Providing some stalwart reassurance though, is Gregg's, the kenspeckle and ubiquitous taste of no-nonsense Cooncil cuisine and none too terrible at that. So it would be rude not to grab a wee steak bake, so I do.
And there's your mobile phone shop and your pawnbrokers. And there's a proper Deli here too called Daisy's selling good artisan gear that would stiff you for double the price if it were on Byres Road or Morningside.
And at a ladies' 'House of Wax' table of unguents and applications (I know not for what) I hear an outbreak of authentic, working class Edinburgh cadences. A lady is complaining to the security guard about some heavy-handedness by the police in her street the previous day. 'Making a 'fuckan nuisance eh themselves, eh?' There are hard 'a's and hard 'u's where I expect simple Glaswegian I's to be.
Two elderly gents called John and Noel are having a 'hing', arms folded over the top-floor balustrade. 'I'm originally from Ireland,' says John, but I've been here more than 40 years and couldn't imagine being anywhere else.' He's pleased with how the Westside looks now. 'It's had its challenges, but it's looking smart and clean now. I like Wester Hailes, there's a good community spirit and I think it's fighting back.'
The single most depressing feature about this tidy two-storey shopping complex is the half dozen or so empty retail units. When you see them in working class neighbourhoods you rage at the insouciant iniquity of casual capitalism and the inability of local authorities to stop them.
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The Bank of Scotland abandoned this place last month. In neighbourhoods like this the banks never hang around once they sense not much more money is to be made. It's as though, having squeezed every last penny out of hard-pressed communities: their high-interest loans, their mortgages then these people have no more value. No matter that elderly people might still need them and God forbid they might be asked to extend some leeway when the jobs disappear and the energy bills soar.
I meet Georgina from nearby Longstone and her friend who very politely and firmly that 'ladies like me shouldn't be giving their names to strange men like you.' I like her. A lot.
I tell Georgina that her pal's right, and that on no account should she be talking to any journalists ... other than those from The Herald because we're founded on respect and good manners and we know our place. They both like the West Side too and suggest it's improved greatly in the last few years.
I feel bound to re-visit Gregg's to source something light for my lunch. There are healthy-looking wraps with chicken arrangements from the Mediterranean and the Far East, which I've never seen in any of their west coast outlets. It's not quite alfalfa crepes and skinny decaffs, but their presence is noted even if they remain unconsumed.
Kevin also toured Wester Hailes High School meeting head teacher David Young (Image: GordonTerris)
There are cafes, a couple of outfitters and of course a handful of male and female personal grooming shops. There's a tendency to dismiss their presence as indicators of something fleeting and insubstantial. In places where there's not much money though, it becomes even more important to look your best and feel good about it. It's about self-respect and caring for yourself.
Kevin McKenna is a Herald writer and columnist and is Scottish Feature Writer of the Year. This year is his 40th in newspapers.