10 Jan 2024
By Stuart Patrick, Chief Executive of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce
There is no denying Sauchiehall Street is a sad shadow of its warmly remembered heyday as one of the city’s most important shopping thoroughfares. It is also true it has been the unluckiest street in Glasgow city centre given the collapse of retail brand names like BHS, three serious fires and the practical challenges of delivering the City Council’s public realm improvement programme in an era of high construction cost inflation.
The street quite fairly attracts considerable attention and criticism. It has become the symbol of a wider concern at the role and current condition of Glasgow’s city centre.
Of all the initiatives Glasgow Chamber of Commerce would like to see progress in 2024, the rebirth of Sauchiehall Street and a fuller recovery for the city’s wider city centre sit at the top of our list. They are the topics most often mentioned to me by Chamber members.
That’s why the Chamber supports the Glasgow City Centre Taskforce and why I know the scale of the challenge as a co-chair of the Taskforce.
Empty shop units and vacant offices across the city centre make it clear action is needed. On the positive side, city centre footfall and spend data has shown some recovery, with footfall on the key streets reaching around 90% of pre-pandemic levels. Figures for both spend and footfall were much healthier last year than in 2022 but growth appears to have slowed - or even stopped - in the last two months of the year.
The launch of the Council’s Golden Z report last August explained much of what needs to be done to breathe fresh life into the most damaged streets. The City Council has now completed the formal consultation on the action plan that followed so, what can we hope to see happen in the next 12 months?
Some actions are within the Council’s own direct reach. Allowing more flexibility in planning rules to make it financially more feasible to convert empty properties into new uses is one although it will take both officials and the members of the city’s planning committee to agree. The recent decision by the committee to reject Fusion Student’s proposals for the conversion of the former Marks and Spencer Sauchiehall Street shop into student accommodation looks like an unhelpful false start. We must hope the damage this has done to investor confidence will be recognised and resolved this year.
The Council has also promised to establish a proactive development support team to work with the business community to help convert some of the most prominent vacant sites. That is quite a commitment given all that has happened to local authority budgets. Seeing the team established and progress being made on schemes for some of the highest profile sites like the BHS building or the fire-ravaged site of the former ABC cinema would be a very positive step forward.
It would also be helpful to see progress this year on the Golden Z report proposal for a cultural district based on Sauchiehall Street. Glasgow Life announced they had been successful in attracting National Heritage Lottery funding as a financial catalyst for getting that initiative underway.
National governments can also help. The UK government could use the Spring Budget to announce the return of a refreshed Business Premises Renovation Allowance targeted on older city centre buildings. That would provide a clear tax incentive to investors to choose empty properties for their projects. The Scottish Government could direct its departments and main agencies to regard the conversion of empty listed city and town centre properties as both an economic development and a net zero priority. Supporting private investors like Landsec at Buchanan Galleries or Sovereign Centros at the St Enoch Centre should also be a priority.
The City Council’s own action plan covers this and a great deal more besides. Seeing some of the aspirations in that document given widespread governmental support to get property conversion schemes underway must be one test of a more positive year.
This article was first published in The Herald on Wednesday 10 January 2024
