31 Oct 2025
By Stuart Patrick, Chief Executive of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce.
Last week, the upgrading of the Buchanan Galleries took a welcome step forward with the partial planning consent for the owners, Landsec, to build a new shop unit on a gap site next door. Currently the site at 170 Buchanan Street is in part occupied by what looks like a temporary building selling souvenirs. Originally the little prefabricated shop unit was indeed intended to have a short life; designed as a drop-in centre for the public to view the plans and models explaining the many construction projects that were springing up across Glasgow in the late 1990’s.
The man responsible for setting up that shop nearly 30 years ago was Stuart Gulliver, then Chief Executive of the Glasgow Development Agency. Stuart sadly passed away in early October after a lifetime devoted to cities and their development and to Glasgow in particular. I knew Stuart well as I was a member of the Glasgow Development Agency team he led for a decade up to the turn of the century.
As we debate Glasgow’s future, we should recognise the legacy of Stuart Gulliver. He had a fascination with architecture and the physical planning of the city. He argued for, and in the face of significant national government resistance, delivered a redesign of Buchanan Street which consolidated the importance of the city’s primary retail thoroughfare. Working in partnership with the City Council, his design was mostly delivered, missing only the glass canopy he had envisaged to run along the east side of the street. Buchanan Street today is by far Glasgow’s most successful shopping destination.
Another of Stuart’s projects was the Lighthouse building in Mitchell Street which he helped convert into a visitor and interpretation centre for architecture and design as a legacy of Glasgow’s designation as UK City of Architecture and Design 1999. That centre has not endured but the City Council announced earlier this year that it will have a new life as a hub for nurturing renewable energy companies. Not every project Stuart promoted proved to be sustainable in its original form.
But so many of Stuart’s ideas have become prominent city features. Glasgow Science Centre is a great example and was a special passion. Opened on July 5th 2001 by Queen Elizabeth II and welcoming its 6 millionth visitor in September last year, it has become the city’s leading institution for the promotion of science and technology in education. Tens of thousands of schoolchildren are helped to understand the importance of science and given there has been no increase in funding by the Scottish Government for well over ten years, its success is a minor miracle.
Sitting next door in Pacific Quay is the headquarters of BBC Scotland. Stuart persuaded the BBC to move out of its former West End base to what had been the site of the Glasgow Garden Festival. One consequence was the delivery of the Clyde Arc bridge, an important element of Stuart’s plan for opening up Pacific Quay as a digital industries campus. Pacific Quay was just one of a series of strategic sites Stuart believed the city needed for housing the growth of emerging industry.
Perhaps the most successful has been the West of Scotland Science Park in the city’s north west and now home to some 40 businesses including Merck Life Sciences and Reprocell. Stuart also had aspirations for a science hub next to the University of Strathclyde which the University later turned into their own idea for the Glasgow City Innovation District. It was also Stuart’s team that developed with the City Council, the proposals for an International Financial Services District (IFSD) in the Broomielaw.
Stuart was a keen advocate for improving the urban realm for all Glaswegians and he fought for the Crown Street Regeneration project in the Gorbals. Re-introducing original street patterns and building high quality tenemental housing, the 40-acre plot has become a template for communities that really meet people’s needs.
Stuart wasn’t solely inspired by physical projects. He encouraged the establishment of a Glasgow Film Fund that began its life investing in Shallow Grave, whose production team then created Trainspotting. He experimented with intermediate labour market solutions to help unemployed Glaswegians back into work at a time when jobs were in short supply. That work built on thinking sketched out by the Wise Group in the 1980s. For 18 years he chaired the Glasgow Jazz Festival which he co-founded.
Stuart Gulliver’s contribution helped set the tone for many of the initiatives underway in Glasgow today. The city centre, badly battered by the consequences of the Covid crisis, is undergoing the biggest investment in the public realm since Buchanan Street with George Square as the flagship.
Glasgow City Region now has three Innovation Districts led by the University of Strathclyde and the University of Glasgow and which are catalysts for investment in a new generation of technology companies in advanced manufacturing, life sciences and digital technologies. Those Innovation Districts are the strategic sites of today.
The IFSD will be 25 years old next year with recent investments in fresh office space by Barclays, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley in both Broomielaw and Tradeston proving the validity of the original concept. Around 10,000 jobs have been secured for Glasgow from these 3 companies alone.
I will remember Stuart not just as an inspiration for a life in economic development but as a fiercely passionate battler for Glasgow at a time when the city was perceived by many as a lost cause. Stuart brought Glasgow to the international stage and positioned it as a leading mid-size city.
Today, we hear similar criticisms, but the circumstances are very different. In 1991 Glasgow was a declining city. Today the city and its region are growing faster than national averages. Thirty years ago there were not enough jobs to go round. Today employers report skill shortages as their most significant barrier to growth. The emergence of new industries was an aspiration; today we have new companies popping up in renewable energy, artificial intelligence, space communications, life sciences and maritime.
The souvenir shop on Buchanan Street will soon be gone, replaced by new investment. I suspect Stuart would have been delighted.
This article was first published in The Herald on Friday 31 October 2025.
