Features

Glasgow reborn

1 Jul 2010 by AndrewGough

Hosting the 2014 Commonwealth Games will complete the Scottish city’s transformation from industrial centre to events powerhouse, says Sara Turner

The word “renaissance” may often be bandied about to describe the transformation of cities, but in the case of Glasgow it really is apt.

Since being named European City of Culture two decades ago, this former industrial stronghold has steadily transformed itself into Scotland’s busiest conference and events city, and an arts centre of note. It is now preparing for its biggest test – hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2014, when it will welcome more than 6,000 of the world’s top athletes from 71 countries, as well as hundreds of thousands of visitors.

The Games will leave a lasting legacy. New sporting venues being built include the National Indoor Sporting Arena, the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome and a hockey centre, while the athletes’ village will afterwards become affordable housing.

As part of the preparations, Glasgow City Council has committed to investing £880 million in improving its transport infrastructure. The event will also be low carbon and low waste, which will set environmental standards for the city for years to come – plans include improving air quality and waste management, expanding green spaces and investing in green technologies.

This fresh persona is a far cry from the soot-covered image of post-industrial Glasgow still held in living memory. One of the main cities of the industrial revolution, it was also the world’s shipbuilding capital and a centre for innovation – the steam engine was perfected here by Scottish inventor James Watt. But as demand for shipbuilding fell, the city went into decline, and the gloom of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s saw unemployment rise sharply.

To turn itself around, Glasgow had to change – but first, it had to clean itself up. In the 1970s, government grants were given to help home and business owners get their blackened buildings cleaned. Within a year and a half, a blonde sandstone city emerged.

Next, it had to break its reliance on heavy industry and give people a reason to visit. One way was to encourage tourism with a new raft of museums and galleries (see panel overleaf), and the other was to attract the events industry. In 1985 the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre (SECC) opened, expanded just over a decade later with the Clyde Auditorium, designed by Norman Foster and otherwise known as the Armadillo. This year, the centre celebrates its 25th anniversary, and next up is the 12,500-seat Scottish National Arena – also designed by Foster, it will be open in time for the 2014 Games. It will be Scotland’s largest indoor venue for hosting live performances and large conferences, and as part of the development, a new hotel will be built, details of which are yet to be released.

Last year, the conference and events industry generated about £135 million in turnover for the city, with hotels sold out for 173 nights of the year as a result, says Scott Taylor, chief executive of Glasgow City Marketing Bureau. “Today the city employs more people in tourism and hospitality than were ever employed at the height of shipbuilding,” he adds.

A number of new hotel openings should help to deal with demand. Dutch group Citizen M will open the first of its “affordable luxury” properties outside Amsterdam in the autumn, on the corner of Hope and Renfrew streets. Its 198 rooms will feature power showers, free wifi and king-size beds. Hotel Indigo, the boutique brand of Intercontinental Hotels Group, will launch its first Scottish property early next year in what used to be the Glasgow Corporation Electricity Department on Waterloo Street, with 94 bedrooms.

Jurys Inn is due to open a second hotel in the city next year on Elliot Street, near the SECC, with 230 rooms. In 2013, Dubai-based luxury group Jumeirah is scheduled to open a property on Argyle Street. It will have 172 rooms, 68 serviced apartments, a spa, infinity pool and rooftop cocktail lounge.

More development is to come, much of it along the River Clyde, where the SECC is located. The square kilometre of the city centre stretching back from the Clyde became the International Financial Services District (IFSD) in 2001, having previously been neglected. The aim was to provide a top-class working environment for financial services companies in the hope that they would set up offices here. The scheme seems to have worked as, despite the recession, some 15,000 jobs have been created since its inception. More than £1 billion has been invested in the district so far.

IFSD spokesman David Budge points out Glasgow has a long-standing heritage in the financial sector going back to the 18th and 19th centuries. “Because of Glasgow’s great status as a trading city, and then as a manufacturing and shipbuilding city – when the phrase ‘Clyde built’ became famous across the world for quality engineered products – the insurance industry followed this wealth here,” he explains. “To this day it is a major UK centre for general insurance, and all the big insurance companies have offices here. The [financial] sector continues to be a major contributor to the city in terms of growth, and I’m sure it will continue to be so.”

According to Budge, the downturn hasn’t had too much of an adverse effect. “Based on performance over the past couple of years, we believe strongly that Glasgow has weathered the recession well in comparison with most other regional cities in the UK, because it has had this momentum of growth behind it,” he says. “We were fortunate to have a lot of development in the pipeline that was all forward-funded.” The past two years have seen some 74,000 sqm of new office space built, which “is filling up quite nicely”, Budge reports.

Recent research seems to reflect this positive outlook. Investment and globalisation magazine FDI’s European Cities and Regions of the Future 2010-11 study placed Glasgow seventh in the category for large European cities and second for foreign and direct investment strategy.

Glasgow Central hotel, located at the rail station of the same name, is another example of the city’s continuing rebirth. When it was built in 1883 it was considered one of Glasgow’s top properties, while its restaurant, Malmaison, was among the most desirable places to dine, with guests including the Queen, Sir Winston Churchill and John F Kennedy. It was also the venue to which the world’s first long-distance television pictures were transmitted from London in 1927, by Scottish inventor John Logie Baird.

More recently the hotel fell on harder times, and it closed early last year. Shortly afterwards it was snapped up by Principal Hayley, owner of Hotel Russell in London and Edinburgh’s George Hotel, which is busy returning it to its former glory. When I visited in February, there was still graffiti on the walls and evidence of refectory-style dining in the once grand ballroom, but in the restoration, original marble floors, Murano glass chandeliers and the ballroom’s original ornate high ceiling have been rediscovered.

General manager Laurie Nicol says: “Where we can work with the original features, we will. We’re trying to respect the history of the hotel.” She adds that the reopening will be significant for the city:

“People have a fondness for the hotel. They may have worked here in the past, or their parents were married here – everybody seems to have a connection with it. I think people are excited about the prospect of it being brought back to the way it should be.”

The grand old dame is due to open in September as the four-star Grand Central hotel. All 186 rooms will have laptop safes, irons and ironing boards, free internet and tea and coffee-making facilities. For conferences and events, the Grand room, with natural daylight and a nine-metre-high ceiling, will seat up to 500 people for dinner, and there are 20 further meeting rooms.

The five-star Blythswood Square hotel offers a similar story. In its past life it was the headquarters of the Royal Scottish Automobile Club, and the Scottish starting point for the Monte Carlo rally. As one of the city’s leading members’ clubs, it was also an important cultural and business hub. Unfortunately, by 2001 membership had dropped from a high of 8,000 to only 1,200 and financial difficulties were looming, so the building was sold to hotel group the Town House Collection. A stunning 100-room luxury property opened here in November after three years of renovation work (for a review visit businesstraveller.com/tried-and-tested).

The décor echoes the property’s heritage, with pictures of vintage motor cars hanging in the hallways, but a less salubrious history is also referenced, according to general manager Hans Rissmann. “Blythswood Square was famously known as the red light district,” he says, explaining the red cushions in the lobby and the crimson lanterns that light up the windows at night. “Over the years that has disappeared, so it’s something of a homage to the area as it once was. It’s a bit tongue in cheek – an indication of the Glaswegian sense of humour.”

It’s this sense of humour that seems to bring people back again and again, according to Taylor at Glasgow City Marketing Bureau. “There’s a lot of confidence about the place – people are generally self-effacing and a lot of fun,” he says. ”If Glasgow were a person, you’d go out with them at night and be back at four in the morning. It’s got a vibe that’s different to most cities – it beats at a different pace.”

And doubtless the city’s current transformation won’t be its last. Taylor says: “Glasgow has reinvented itself more times than Madonna. We want to shine, and the 2014 Games will help us do that.”

CONTACTS

glasgow2014.com
ifsdglasgow.co.uk
principal-hayley.com
secc.co.uk
seeglasgow.com
townhousecompany.com/blythswoodsquare

 

Art at its heart

In Glasgow, art is everything. According to Scott Taylor at Glasgow City Marketing Bureau it has Europe’s greatest collection of civic art, and much of it can be seen for free at museums and galleries across the city. “When Glasgow won the 1990 European City of Culture, there was a howl of derision,” he says. “People said: ‘The only culture you’ll find in Glasgow is at the bottom of a glass.’ But that’s not so.”

One of the most prestigious groups of artworks held in Glasgow is the Burrell collection, a gift from shipping magnate William Burrell and his wife, Constance, in 1944. He had been a collector since his teens, and the 9,000 or so pieces includes works from all over the world – from Chinese paintings to sculptures from ancient Rome. Since 1983 it has been housed in a purpose-built museum in Pollok Country Park, three miles south-west of the city centre.

The city council runs another 12 museums and galleries, including the Gallery of Modern Art and the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, reopened in 2006 after a three-year, £28 million restoration. More than 8,000 objects are on display, including masterpieces by Dali, Rembrandt and Titian, as well as suits of armour, an ancient Egyptian mummy and a four-metre ceratosaur.

The work of Glasgow’s own Charles Rennie Mackintosh, one of the leaders of the art nouveau movement, is also well worth exploring – the buildings he designed include the Willow Tea Rooms on Sauchiehall Street and the iconic Glasgow School of Art on Renfrew Street. The Hunterian Gallery, part of the University of Glasgow, houses the Mackintosh Collection, which includes more than 800 drawings, designs and watercolours as well as letters by, and photographs of, the great man himself.

Visit glasgowmuseums.com, hunterian.gla.ac.uk

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