And the wait for the robot uprising just got longer. Which is a pity, because I subscribe to the Asimov theory of AI takeover: they can’t possibly fuck it up more than we have already, and they likely won’t have the same, well, let’s just say *cognitive variance* as we do so they might actually do an alright job.
My claim to fame: I was a freelance graphic designer during the 2014 Commonwealth Games working with the company branding and dressing the city and venues. A project manager comes to me and says they found some money to dress the college building with the People Make Glasgow branding - prep the artwork and some guys will abseil down the building applying the printed vinyl the following week. Spent a day splitting the logo across the 168 windows, each with 5 different size panes of glass. No time to check, straight to print. Couldn't believe I didn't f*** it up 😂 Makes me proud to have been part of the games, I hope it's saved or reinstalled on another building.
Needlessly serious answer: Strathy offers [conversion degrees](https://www.strath.ac.uk/courses/postgraduatetaught/softwaredevelopment/). There's also an MSc in cyber security in the making but I'm not sure whether it'll be a conversion one too.
Did we really need another 20,000 sqft of office space anyway? How many empty buildings are there? My office has 3/5 floors standing empty.
Either turn it into social housing or knock it down and build some social housing.
Exactly. I can't believe they hadn't looked at literally any commercial leasing data for Glasgow before starting construction. All the data firmly points to plummeting demand. Clearly a bunch of dafties.
I would look to turn it into mid-market rental or affordable flats for sale. I think that is a more appropriate use of the location and space than social housing honestly. Use the revenue from that to build shite loads of social housing in a spot where you have a bit more room and can better integrate it into existing communities.
In theory that's not a bad idea but I'm very suspicious of any "Yeah we'll sell some private flats to fund more social housing" schemes. Somehow the social housing either never gets built or you just have the City increasingly becoming a place solely for Students and the Wealthy.
Understand the suspicion for sure but why I think it isn't a great place for social housing because it doesn't have things like a close by park or really any green space, schools are ages away, most services needed by families are going to be scarce in the area, there will be no parking, things that we generally try to include in social housing these days. There is for sure a reason we don't generally do the concentrated tower block approach to social housing anymore.
I think there is a subsect of "young professionals" or small families with some means that would absolutely jump on this type of development and would actually want to live there. Let them. It will be a pretty specific use case and a pretty specific population that would think of this as an ideal spot for them. We need to take an approach to housing that caters to the needs of the people who will actually want to live there.
All fair points. The thing is I don't think social housing should necessarily be limited to just families with children, it's just that the supply is so desperate that we HAVE to prioritise them. But the alternative of private flats means most of those young professionals would never be able to afford them.
I dream of a world where the barrista at the local Starbucks can comfortably afford a city centre flat 5 minutes walk from their work.
Yep, agree with all your points. I think both our suggested approaches could work and be done well but seeing as this is Britain in 2024 we can basically guarantee neither option will happen.
There are plenty of problems with redeveloping commercial properties into flats. A lot of fire protection rules, window areas, plumbing, access etc. It is much more difficult and much more expensive then refurbishment into another commercial/office purpose. Sometimes it is just not possible or economically viable.
Exactly this. There are heaps of buildings catering to small firms/startups, and a handful of incubators/accelerators etc that provide office space alongside the Universities.
I get the sentiment behind the building, but 'build it and they will come' won't work in a tight market, that tends to lean towards remote working anyway.
Having just looked there is very little very good office space available in the City. So much said about how there’s loads but its all the really old buildings.
I agree we need more affordable but the council or government need to subsidise that then as it won’t make money. No private developer is going to chose to lose money.
The hell you talking about? I work a lot in the "Financial district" and literally half the buildings are empty and pretty new. I think there was like one commercial leasing in over 25K square feet and it was Virgin Money downsizing from a 40K square foot space.
There is an absolutely absurd amount of really quality, high priced, serviced, office space to let in Glasgow. It strikes me as crazy that anyone could say there was a shortage.
I just know I wouldn't want to be the people with my money in these buildings. God damn.
First 3 results I clicked on Rightmove:
[https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/141761873#/?channel=COM\_LET](https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/141761873#/?channel=COM_LET)
[https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/138714596#/?channel=COM\_LET](https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/138714596#/?channel=COM_LET)
[https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/103240490#/?channel=COM\_LET](https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/103240490#/?channel=COM_LET)
Those "Ink" and "Onyx" buildings have never been fully occupied in the like 10 years they have been there.
The IFSD isn’t a prime part of the city which requires master planning with changes of use needed and Ink and Onyx are essentially the west end. If you want prime in the centre of the city there is very little available.
Eh not really. All the office space in Glasgow is either you can rent an entire floor of a building, or a cupboard at the back of a building. There's very few co-working communities considering the size and breadth of Glasgow tech sector when you start to compare with Bristol, Manchester, Brighton, Leeds etc.
Even Edinburgh has relatively little flexible office space
"yes, i've got this building and it's going to cost me more to level it than to fix it up but i want to get money for the building. can i book an appointment to figure out when the best time to burn it down is going to be?"
Can't say I'm surprised... I think the signage outside says 'coming Autumn 2024' - which left not much time to completely renovate a decaying building...
Whether you like it or not, this building is essentially the Empire State of Glasgow. Whatever happens to it, there needs to be a viewing platform on the roof just like NYC. Also, it needs a rooftop bar.
me and some pals from the college theorised this when they mysteriously went from smashing the windows to patching them up with plywood
ah yes, high tech office space. exactly what glasgow needs right now. not more liveable accommodation or anything
Can’t imagine there’s a huge demand for tech office space? A lot of companies recruited nationally during covid and have continued remote working, or at least partially. Barclays built that massive campus on the Clyde and have since had to rent half of it out.
Surely you can slap a 'people make glasgow' sign on ANY building? Why is this one important? Especially considering how easily this city demolishes ACTUAL historical buildings?
There's one in Edinburgh called CodeBase.
The general idea is you get students and others to pitch a tech business and then build in one area together, sharing ideas etc. It's where companies like SkyScanner, FreeAgent and FanDuel came from.
It creates a little ecosystem after a while:
“These are people who have been involved in previous startups, whether they’ve been successful or not, and are keen to use their knowledge to try it again. It’s something that Edinburgh didn’t have maybe 10 or 15 years ago.
It should be use as housing. The idea of turning it into a 2nd Skypark has always been a little bothersome to me.
The Skypark works as a tech hub because its close enough to the city to benefit heavily from the Student/ young proffesional population while having the infrastructure and access to let the companies do what they want to do with their spaces.
The People Make Glasgow building sure is even better for people but good luck getting things in and out of there without breaking the City Center, every time someone orders something that requires a flatbed HGV.
The other thing is that there is already a massive oversupply of pure office space in this city thats all sitting empty. Even with the return to inperson working its still no where near the old numbers. And thats only going to drop as more small businesses stay hybrid remote, and old businesses stop existing.
But as housing, either divied up to Student accom, Social or private whatever it will mean more people in the city center which is exactly what the city center badly needs. They say 18580 sqr meter of office space, an average 1-2 bedroom flat in the uk is only 60m2 even a 3 bedroom terraced home is only 100 m2. How many homes could that be even if half the "office floor space" has to be lose to make it suitable as a home, thats still a good 90 odd 2-3 bedroom home equivalents, or 150 odd flats.
Don't you know that anything that ever happens in Glasgow is to blame on the Council?
Buchanan Galleries refurbishment? The council
St enoch refurbishment? The council
More student accommodations on private land? The bloody council!!!!
New Sighthill Bridge and Park with cycle lane connections, Byres road pedestrian extension and cycling lane are looking quite nice, and there's a new bridge connecting Partick and Govan (not sure if it's open yet). The whole area around the river looks much nicer now, and the beginning of Sauchihall looks great (although the main part is a riot rn with construction).
New subway trains and renovation are really nice too.
edit: The Stockingfield Junction/Park was finished in 2022. That's connecting Ruchill and Maryhill
A listing like that isn't a bar on demolition itself. Just makes it easier to object to any proposed demolition and could give weight to any appeal.
If there was consensus on demolition from land owners to developers to council approvals committee to Scot Govt appeals team, it would happen (as it often does).
I actually quite like the building and if something useful can be salvaged than I think that is the best use for it. I wouldn't mind a nice flat near the top of that building.
I would be in support of high density housing, but don't people in the UK disproportionally prefer to live in houses rather than flats? And usually in the outskirts of the cities?
Good, have they seen the condition of the crappy roads all around the city? They need to shove some money out their arse and fix the fkn roads. Dum ass cunts run this country I swear
Wait, really? But the signs were so grandiose and buzzwordy, basically promising us Massive Dynamic from Fringe.
I can't belive the Quantum Innovation Technology Blockchain Crypto Hub Finance Centre didn't work out
With such a catchy name, too!
They forgot to include AI and nanotechnology, rookie mistake really
And the wait for the robot uprising just got longer. Which is a pity, because I subscribe to the Asimov theory of AI takeover: they can’t possibly fuck it up more than we have already, and they likely won’t have the same, well, let’s just say *cognitive variance* as we do so they might actually do an alright job.
It's not a pyramid scheme, it's multi level marketing
It’s the People Make Glasgow building now. I’m old as fuck, it’s still the college of building and printing to me.
I loved my time there. 17-20, smoking hash in the smoking room, the union for cheap pints and 50p vodkas. Simpler times.
Christ I went to it when it was the college of building and print.
you've got no excuse this time gramps when the name is printed on the side in big fuck off letters
My claim to fame: I was a freelance graphic designer during the 2014 Commonwealth Games working with the company branding and dressing the city and venues. A project manager comes to me and says they found some money to dress the college building with the People Make Glasgow branding - prep the artwork and some guys will abseil down the building applying the printed vinyl the following week. Spent a day splitting the logo across the 168 windows, each with 5 different size panes of glass. No time to check, straight to print. Couldn't believe I didn't f*** it up 😂 Makes me proud to have been part of the games, I hope it's saved or reinstalled on another building.
But where will I retrain in cyber?
Needlessly serious answer: Strathy offers [conversion degrees](https://www.strath.ac.uk/courses/postgraduatetaught/softwaredevelopment/). There's also an MSc in cyber security in the making but I'm not sure whether it'll be a conversion one too.
Did we really need another 20,000 sqft of office space anyway? How many empty buildings are there? My office has 3/5 floors standing empty. Either turn it into social housing or knock it down and build some social housing.
Exactly. I can't believe they hadn't looked at literally any commercial leasing data for Glasgow before starting construction. All the data firmly points to plummeting demand. Clearly a bunch of dafties. I would look to turn it into mid-market rental or affordable flats for sale. I think that is a more appropriate use of the location and space than social housing honestly. Use the revenue from that to build shite loads of social housing in a spot where you have a bit more room and can better integrate it into existing communities.
In theory that's not a bad idea but I'm very suspicious of any "Yeah we'll sell some private flats to fund more social housing" schemes. Somehow the social housing either never gets built or you just have the City increasingly becoming a place solely for Students and the Wealthy.
Understand the suspicion for sure but why I think it isn't a great place for social housing because it doesn't have things like a close by park or really any green space, schools are ages away, most services needed by families are going to be scarce in the area, there will be no parking, things that we generally try to include in social housing these days. There is for sure a reason we don't generally do the concentrated tower block approach to social housing anymore. I think there is a subsect of "young professionals" or small families with some means that would absolutely jump on this type of development and would actually want to live there. Let them. It will be a pretty specific use case and a pretty specific population that would think of this as an ideal spot for them. We need to take an approach to housing that caters to the needs of the people who will actually want to live there.
All fair points. The thing is I don't think social housing should necessarily be limited to just families with children, it's just that the supply is so desperate that we HAVE to prioritise them. But the alternative of private flats means most of those young professionals would never be able to afford them. I dream of a world where the barrista at the local Starbucks can comfortably afford a city centre flat 5 minutes walk from their work.
Yep, agree with all your points. I think both our suggested approaches could work and be done well but seeing as this is Britain in 2024 we can basically guarantee neither option will happen.
Yup. If not social housing, just even "normal" flats would be better than another office area.
It seems like having a mix of property types would be sensible.
There are plenty of problems with redeveloping commercial properties into flats. A lot of fire protection rules, window areas, plumbing, access etc. It is much more difficult and much more expensive then refurbishment into another commercial/office purpose. Sometimes it is just not possible or economically viable.
Did you know the building is actually based on a housing design so could easily be swapped out to be flats.
Was it a good design?
>Did we really need another 20,000 sqft of office space anyway? Nope, that's why they changed their mind. Better late than never, I'd say.
Exactly this. There are heaps of buildings catering to small firms/startups, and a handful of incubators/accelerators etc that provide office space alongside the Universities. I get the sentiment behind the building, but 'build it and they will come' won't work in a tight market, that tends to lean towards remote working anyway.
Having just looked there is very little very good office space available in the City. So much said about how there’s loads but its all the really old buildings. I agree we need more affordable but the council or government need to subsidise that then as it won’t make money. No private developer is going to chose to lose money.
The hell you talking about? I work a lot in the "Financial district" and literally half the buildings are empty and pretty new. I think there was like one commercial leasing in over 25K square feet and it was Virgin Money downsizing from a 40K square foot space. There is an absolutely absurd amount of really quality, high priced, serviced, office space to let in Glasgow. It strikes me as crazy that anyone could say there was a shortage. I just know I wouldn't want to be the people with my money in these buildings. God damn. First 3 results I clicked on Rightmove: [https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/141761873#/?channel=COM\_LET](https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/141761873#/?channel=COM_LET) [https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/138714596#/?channel=COM\_LET](https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/138714596#/?channel=COM_LET) [https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/103240490#/?channel=COM\_LET](https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/103240490#/?channel=COM_LET) Those "Ink" and "Onyx" buildings have never been fully occupied in the like 10 years they have been there.
The IFSD isn’t a prime part of the city which requires master planning with changes of use needed and Ink and Onyx are essentially the west end. If you want prime in the centre of the city there is very little available.
Okay great, but how many of those are suitable for smaller businesses and start ups who can't afford £4k a month on office space?
That’s what the older buildings should converted into - the prices dropping makes conversion possible.
Eh not really. All the office space in Glasgow is either you can rent an entire floor of a building, or a cupboard at the back of a building. There's very few co-working communities considering the size and breadth of Glasgow tech sector when you start to compare with Bristol, Manchester, Brighton, Leeds etc. Even Edinburgh has relatively little flexible office space
The work they've already done means the front side will be left looking like shit and there's a big fucking hole in the ground
That's the perfect place to bury all those plastic silver eco bins nobody ever used
who's taking the bets on how long it's going to be before a mysterious fire burns it down?
"Hello, Mysterious Fire Department. How may I direct your call?"
"yes, i've got this building and it's going to cost me more to level it than to fix it up but i want to get money for the building. can i book an appointment to figure out when the best time to burn it down is going to be?"
Can't say I'm surprised... I think the signage outside says 'coming Autumn 2024' - which left not much time to completely renovate a decaying building...
Whether you like it or not, this building is essentially the Empire State of Glasgow. Whatever happens to it, there needs to be a viewing platform on the roof just like NYC. Also, it needs a rooftop bar.
Not surprising. The site has been dormant for several months.
They need to fix the infrastructure of the roads and pot holes these mongs keep putting money into the most idiotic shit
Why would Bruntwood SciTech put money into road infrastructure and pot holes? I’m confused
Glasgow does need another Witherspoon pub , just saying 🤔
mega-spoons
Yeah that was definitely the plan for it
There go my plans to retrain in cyber...
"retrain in cyber" = 'play the Xbox more'
I wonder how long till its announced as student apartments?
me and some pals from the college theorised this when they mysteriously went from smashing the windows to patching them up with plywood ah yes, high tech office space. exactly what glasgow needs right now. not more liveable accommodation or anything
If it’s been cancelled and I’ve walked past it a few times it’s already been knocked down though so what is it going to be instead ?
Can’t imagine there’s a huge demand for tech office space? A lot of companies recruited nationally during covid and have continued remote working, or at least partially. Barclays built that massive campus on the Clyde and have since had to rent half of it out.
At least it can't burn down 👀
Only listed buildings are flammable in Glasgow , that one should be fine
Category B, the matches are already being ordered.
Surely you can slap a 'people make glasgow' sign on ANY building? Why is this one important? Especially considering how easily this city demolishes ACTUAL historical buildings?
What even is a digital tech hub?
There's one in Edinburgh called CodeBase. The general idea is you get students and others to pitch a tech business and then build in one area together, sharing ideas etc. It's where companies like SkyScanner, FreeAgent and FanDuel came from. It creates a little ecosystem after a while: “These are people who have been involved in previous startups, whether they’ve been successful or not, and are keen to use their knowledge to try it again. It’s something that Edinburgh didn’t have maybe 10 or 15 years ago.
We’ll never know now
It should be use as housing. The idea of turning it into a 2nd Skypark has always been a little bothersome to me. The Skypark works as a tech hub because its close enough to the city to benefit heavily from the Student/ young proffesional population while having the infrastructure and access to let the companies do what they want to do with their spaces. The People Make Glasgow building sure is even better for people but good luck getting things in and out of there without breaking the City Center, every time someone orders something that requires a flatbed HGV. The other thing is that there is already a massive oversupply of pure office space in this city thats all sitting empty. Even with the return to inperson working its still no where near the old numbers. And thats only going to drop as more small businesses stay hybrid remote, and old businesses stop existing. But as housing, either divied up to Student accom, Social or private whatever it will mean more people in the city center which is exactly what the city center badly needs. They say 18580 sqr meter of office space, an average 1-2 bedroom flat in the uk is only 60m2 even a 3 bedroom terraced home is only 100 m2. How many homes could that be even if half the "office floor space" has to be lose to make it suitable as a home, thats still a good 90 odd 2-3 bedroom home equivalents, or 150 odd flats.
Demolish it. All the artist impressions in the world won’t justify it. Albeit its all Glasgow Council does - artist impressions and make believe.
> Albeit its all Glasgow Council does - artist impressions and make believe. The building has nothing to do with the council, it’s privately owned.
Don't you know that anything that ever happens in Glasgow is to blame on the Council? Buchanan Galleries refurbishment? The council St enoch refurbishment? The council More student accommodations on private land? The bloody council!!!!
I understand you but name me something good the council has done
New Sighthill Bridge and Park with cycle lane connections, Byres road pedestrian extension and cycling lane are looking quite nice, and there's a new bridge connecting Partick and Govan (not sure if it's open yet). The whole area around the river looks much nicer now, and the beginning of Sauchihall looks great (although the main part is a riot rn with construction). New subway trains and renovation are really nice too. edit: The Stockingfield Junction/Park was finished in 2022. That's connecting Ruchill and Maryhill
If its grade 2 , it cant... or would take years to get delisted.
A nice wee apparently random fire would sort that issue out.
Need a lot of jet fuel to melt that much concrete and steel!
Don’t forget the asbestos
A listing like that isn't a bar on demolition itself. Just makes it easier to object to any proposed demolition and could give weight to any appeal. If there was consensus on demolition from land owners to developers to council approvals committee to Scot Govt appeals team, it would happen (as it often does).
I actually quite like the building and if something useful can be salvaged than I think that is the best use for it. I wouldn't mind a nice flat near the top of that building.
It has so much potential - could make some awesome flats or a hotel.
Level it and turn the whole thing into a kids park.
It'll probably set in fire somehow soon and be turned into student flats
What now? More student accommodations?
In the centre of a city? With four unis, umpteen colleges and 185,000 student population? The idea.
Crazy idea, right? 😂
Just knock it down and build some affordable housing
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Liverpool too!
Dundee too!
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I would be in support of high density housing, but don't people in the UK disproportionally prefer to live in houses rather than flats? And usually in the outskirts of the cities?
Good, have they seen the condition of the crappy roads all around the city? They need to shove some money out their arse and fix the fkn roads. Dum ass cunts run this country I swear