8.6 The potential for economic development in the City Centre depends on the interaction between, and the dynamism of, its service functions. The City Centre’s ability to generate further investment, more employment and higher income, can only be sustained if it is maintained and developed as a major transport and communications hub and high environmental standards are achieved. These qualities, however, require constant attention if Glasgow is to maintain its position in the face of global competition for business and financial investment. The Council, public agencies, and the private sector each have a crucial role to play in supporting and assisting this process.

City Centre Office

8.7 Glasgow City Centre is the prime location for office development in Scotland. The concentration and clustering of the service sector in the City Centre generates benefits for the City that result in improved investment, incomes and indirect employment. Business and public services account for much of the demand for office floorspace, sustaining 55,000 jobs, 60% of total City Centre workforce. The qualities and characteristics of the service sector are assets that offer opportunities for indigenous companies and inward investors to locate or expand in the City Centre. The provision of a high-quality office and property infrastructure aimed at attracting key inward investment decision-making and office-related employment will be encouraged and supported by public transport and environmental improvements.

The City Council will continue to promote the City Centre as the primary location for high quality office and property infrastructure.

8.8 The prospect of the decentralisation of office and business use is a potential threat to a key functional element of the City Centre. In response to this potential threat, a Principal Office Area (Figure 8.2) has been established within the City Centre. The Principal Office Area lies substantially within the Central Outstanding Conservation Area and contains much of Glasgow’s fine architectural heritage. It is the preferred location for all new large office developments and is supported by policy DEV 6: Principal Office Area (City Centre).

Figure 8.2: Principal Office Area

The City Council will continue to promote the Principal Office Area as the preferred location for office business and administration services in the City Centre.

8.9 Glasgow City Centre is the largest retail centre outside the West-End of London, providing employment for around 13,000 people. The City’s position as the major retailing centre in Scotland is a reflection of the available range of retailing, its trading turnover and profitability. The City Centre has experienced massive retail development activity in recent years, the presence of national and international operators supporting further retail expansion through the development of department stores and high-quality shopping in Glasgow. For Glasgow to maintain its competitiveness within the UK Retail Hierarchy, it is important that the City Centre’s attractiveness and the conditions that sustain its attractiveness, are enhanced.

The City Council will support retail development that sustains the City Centre as Scotland’s major retail destination.

8.10 The preferred location for all major retail investment is the Principal Retail Area, centred on Buchanan Street and extending from Sauchiehall Street to Argyle Street/St Enoch Square (Figure 8.3). Policy DEV 7: Principal Retail Area (City Centre) helps encourage and focus all major retail investment to the City Centre to ensure that the area remains attractive to shoppers, retailers and retail investors.

Figure 8.3: Principal Retail Area

The City Council will continue to promote the Principal Retail Area as the preferred location for retail investment in the City Centre.

8.11 The vitality of the Principal Retail Area is enhanced by concentrating retail floor space in close proximity within compact areas or streets, providing consumers with easy and convenient access to a wide range of retail outlets and generating high levels of foot-fall and volumes of retail trade. This helps to support enhanced revenue, turnover and profitability. Within the City Centre, a number of streets have been identified where the retail function is most concentrated. These have been designated as the Primary Retail Streets and, within them, changes to uses outwith Class 1 retailing might prejudice their role and ability to withstand competition from other town centres and out-of-town locations elsewhere in the West of Scotland and beyond (see policies CC/SC 1: The Sequential Approach to Retail, Leisure and Entertainment and Related Development in the City Centre and CC/SC 2: Retail and Non Retail Uses in the City Centre).

The City Council will resist changes of use from Retail (Class1), within the designated Primary Retail Streets.

8.12 Purpose-designed and built retail centres and refurbished or upgraded property facilitate the improved management and operation of retail shops. The confidence of retail investors is subsequently enhanced as a result of more efficient trading methods and practices enabling retailing in the City Centre and in the Primary Retail Streets particularly, to be more cost efficient. In order to enhance further the City Centre’s competitiveness, through improved management, marketing and maintenance, the Council, in association with Scottish Enterprise Glasgow, the Chamber of Commerce and the Glasgow Call Centre Association, has established the City Centre Partnership.

The City Council will support the work of the City Centre Partnership.

8.13 Telecommunications has a key role to play in strengthening the economy of the City Centre and overcoming any perceived disadvantage it may have as a result of its geographical isolation on the western edge of Europe. The City Centre already has an advanced telecommunications network that gives Glasgow an advantage in relation to other cities in Western Europe. Faced with an increasingly complex telecommunications market, small and medium-sized enterprises must have access to independent advice, information and training on telecommunications services. Glasgow’s comparative advantage would be reinforced by encouraging the promotion and take-up of existing services and facilities, especially by small and medium-sized enterprises.

The City Council will encourage companies (especially small and medium sized enterprises), to investigate and improve the take-up of Information and Communications Technologies.

8.14 Increasing flows of information demand further advances in Information and Communications Technologies such as broadband facilities in the form of high-speed telecommunications and voice and data services via the internet. Glasgow generally, and the City Centre in particular, is well served by broadband facilities and benefits from several high capacity local optical fibre networks. Information and Communications Technologies has the potential to re-orientate learning to be more user-friendly.

The City Council will investigate the economic and social benefits of providing greater access to information networks.

8.15 While the manufacturing and industrial presence in the City Centre is of limited scale, activities such as graphic design, printing, publishing, distribution and storage, small scale and specialist manufacturing or craft enterprises have a potential role to play in linking to, and supporting, the City Centre business function. The northern edge of the Townhead and Cowcaddens areas retains the type of economic activity described above and is the only extensive area that could accommodate their expansion within the City Centre. The area is also ideally located adjacent to the M8 and the wider motorway network.

The City Council, through the Development Policies, will retain the Townhead/Cowcaddens Business Area as a location for industrial and business investment in the City Centre.

8.16 Other parts of the City Centre also offer opportunities to accommodate business uses, particularly the Broomielaw, St. Enoch and the Merchant City. Within these areas, there are opportunities to convert former warehouse and commercial buildings to provide serviced offices. These multi-business centres offer small and medium-sized enterprises the benefits of shared office administrative support and modern telecommunications applications.

The City Council will support the creation of multi-business centres within the City Centre.

8.17 Tertiary education plays a key role in the economic, social and physical development of the City Centre. There are 25,000 students attending educational institutions in the City Centre and around 10,000 people employed in education and research-related activities. Strathclyde University and Glasgow Caledonian University, together with the College of Commerce and the College of Building and Printing are creating a distinctive educational campus between George Street and Cowcaddens/Townhead.

Glasgow Caledonian University

The City Council will support Tertiary Education institutions to promote their academic research and development and encourage this activity at locations such as the City Science Park.

8.19 Glasgow Caledonian University’s sports centre, health building and extension to the William Harley Library have created a new pedestrian gateway and the University’s campus development programme includes the construction of additional halls of residence at Dobbie’s Loan to accommodate its expanding student population.

8.20 Both Strathclyde and Caledonian Universities are progressing campus development programmes that address their immediate to long-term development aspirations and allow individual proposals to be considered in context. Strathclyde University’s John Anderson Campus Development Plan consolidates its position on Rottenrow Hill and links the civic centre of Glasgow at George Square with the Cathedral precinct. Integral to the Campus Development Plan is the redevelopment of Rottenrow Maternity hospital as a new facility for the University (see policy DEV 9: Civic, Hospital and Tertiary Education).

The City Council will encourage all Tertiary Education institutions to prepare Campus Development Plans.

8.21 Tourism generates significant expenditure in the City, helps to support businesses and jobs and contributes to the infrastructure and physical regeneration of the environment. A strong tourist industry can help enhance the image of an area and generate a positive attitude within the wider population, prospective developers and investors. The strength of the City Centre’s appeal for tourists lies in arts, culture and heritage based tourism.

City Centre Representatives

8.22 Glasgow is experiencing substantial growth in business and leisure related tourism. Investment in facilities such as the Clyde Auditorium and the Glasgow Science Centre continues to reinforce the City’s status as an international destination. Business tourism, in the form of conferences, is particularly important to Glasgow. In 1999, total business-tourist expenditure in the City was £150 million. This is a growth market from which Glasgow is expected to benefit in future years.

8.23 Hotel capacity in Glasgow will total 11,500 bedrooms by 2000, an increase of 2,000 bedrooms (22%) since 1999. In 2000, Glasgow had 104 hotels of 10 bedrooms or more, compared with 90 in 1999. Almost all this growth was within the City Centre, or its fringe areas, and included Bewleys Hotel (103 rooms), Langs Hotel (100 rooms), Novotel (139 rooms) and the innovative 386 bed Euro Hostel. Marketing strategies are an essential means of building on the City’s existing strengths and sustaining awareness of Glasgow as a desirable tourist destination.

The City Council will continue to promote tourism and develop strategies that build on the City and the City Centre’s tourist appeal.

8.24 Arts and Culture cover a wide range of activities and facilities including the theatre, music, opera, ballet, galleries and commercial leisure, in the form of pub and night club entertainment. The City Centre has the greatest concentration of arts, culture and media facilities and infrastructure in the West of Scotland. This stock of facilities has been extended with the comprehensive upgrading of the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Sauchiehall Street, the renewal of the Arches Theatre complex under Central Station and the construction of the UGC Megaplex eighteen screen cinema complex in Renfield Street.

8.25 The scale and diversity of arts and cultural activities within Glasgow generally, and the City Centre in particular, is a major asset and the foundation for urban and cultural tourism. In order to sustain and build on the considerable momentum already established, new strategic arts, culture, media and leisure infrastructure should be located within the City Centre.

8.26 The clustering of cultural activity within parts of the City Centre is as much a result of chance as deliberate design. Certain areas of the City Centre in and around Sauchiehall Street, Renfield/Union and Jamaica Streets, the Merchant City, Glasgow Cross/St. Andrew’s Square and the Cathedral Precinct already exhibit this clustering effect. The promotion of links between cultural activities should strengthen the creative industries and establish the conditions for the formation of new media and arts companies.

8.27 The Scottish Media Group’s Headquarters in Cowcaddens is the base for Scottish Television, the Herald, Evening Times and Sunday Herald newspapers and is the largest media centre in Scotland. With the emergence of independent producers and digital technology there is scope for further growth in the creative media industries centred around the Scottish Media Group headquarters.

The City Council will promote the City Centre as a centre of excellence for Arts, Culture, Leisure, Media and Creative industries.