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Re: Project: The Great Eastern

PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 8:08 pm
by HollowHorn
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Re: Project: The Great Eastern

PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 8:12 pm
by crusty_bint
Good to see she's still with us - how was it looking HH? Hopefully we'll see development begin soon!

Re: Project: The Great Eastern

PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 8:18 pm
by HollowHorn
Well the sunlight seem to penetrate down at least three floors, structural fabric looks ok though.

Re: Project: The Great Eastern

PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 8:22 pm
by crusty_bint
As long as the walls are holding up! I imagine the interior was to go anyway, to some extent at least... fingers crossed!

Re: Project: The Great Eastern

PostPosted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 12:22 pm
by Sharon
There is scaffolding going up at the Great Eastern.... work finally commencing?? building needing stabilised??/

No sign of a wrecking ball - yet! (it was top of my list for a festive blow down)

Re: Project: The Great Eastern

PostPosted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 12:29 pm
by penguinmonkey
or any local "businessmen" wearing a balaclava and carrying a box of matches and a can of suspicous liquid? :twisted:

Re: Project: The Great Eastern

PostPosted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 10:01 pm
by dave2
There was fire (of scrap wood I assume) in the back yard when I passed today....and the scaffolding was going up front and back. there were demolition vans coming and going using the access at the East end of the site, but i assume that there will be some internal demolition before the site is handed over to developers even if the main structure is staying?

I note from the above that it is a housing association doing the development - is this a conversion to social housing flats then, cos if so it is a cracking site and much better the site going over to more of the kind of flats planned for Collegelands next door. Though the car parking along that section of Duke Street could be difficult when the High st car park goes. with the Drygate flats also nearing the end of the external repaint and such like, that area of the east end / city centre could soon start to look very nice, and when Collegelands and the meat market site get developed, the city centre may be linked into the east end as well as to the west end without huge vacant derelict sites. Sadly the southside will be separated by the M74.....

Re: Project: The Great Eastern

PostPosted: Sat Jan 10, 2009 10:38 pm
by edward carolan
Went by this evening, and it looked like they put up the scafolding to bear the weight when they removed the roof. From my vantage point, the bottom of the Drygate, it looked like there was nothing under roof level and the floor below which looks like it was added after the fact. It must smell like the bejesus in there. Lets hope there is some kind of watching brief on this structure or it will end up like the Plaza( un-sellable flats) or the picture house at Annisland(frontage-hideous pokey wee over priced $hit)

Re: Project: The Great Eastern

PostPosted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 10:49 am
by Riotgrrl
My Father (an Islay man) claims that in the 50s and 60s the Great Eastern was used by young men coming from the Highlands and Islands to work in Glasgow, and it was a respectable hotel for working men.

I only remember it from when I worked with homeless people in Glasgow. The Great Eastern stunk; it had that prison/institution smell of urine and cheap disinfectant. The individual bedrooms were cell-like, and the partitions between the bedrooms did not reach the full length of the ceiling, so the guys living there had no privacy.

Yet many had lived there for years. Particularly the older homeless men with drink problems, who found the Great Eastern a safer place than the council-run hostels like Peter McCann which were full of younger men with heroin addictions. (And some seemed to have moved there following the closure of the Spike in Bishopbriggs).

I wonder what's happened to the old guys. There's no way they could have sustained independent tenancies in the community after years of homelessness and alcoholism.

A fascinating history to that building. And Glasgow band the Delgados named an album 'The Great Eastern' in tribute to it.

Re: Project: The Great Eastern

PostPosted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 12:59 pm
by Dexter St. Clair
The reputation had started to slip in the sixties although the restauarnt/cafe was still functioning in the mid sixties.

Re: Project: The Great Eastern

PostPosted: Sun Jan 11, 2009 1:17 pm
by onyirtodd
Riotgrrl wrote: .......

I wonder what's happened to the old guys. There's no way they could have sustained independent tenancies in the community after years of homelessness and alcoholism.

...............................



I believe organisations like Link Housing Association http://www.linkhousing.co.uk/homepage are able to acommodate some of those in need of supported, as distinct from wholly independent, tenancies.

Re: Project: The Great Eastern

PostPosted: Fri Mar 06, 2009 8:14 pm
by maccoinnich
Same thing I've just posted at SSC, but thought it might be of interest here too. Great Eastern progress:

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The pictures don't show it, but there's also a new roof being built - the timber roof trusses all seem to have been erected.

Re: Project: The Great Eastern

PostPosted: Tue Mar 17, 2009 2:16 pm
by Sharon
Well it looks like today might be the death sentence for the Great Eastern as it has became "unstable" - how very predictable.

PS. Duke street is closed.

Re: Project: The Great Eastern

PostPosted: Tue Mar 17, 2009 2:30 pm
by Mori
Thats a shame i didn't think they'd let it come to that after all the prep work to try and preserve and revamp the building over the last months, i knew the roof was unstable, but have founds gave way ? why has it become unstable. :?:

Re: Project: The Great Eastern

PostPosted: Tue Mar 17, 2009 2:41 pm
by Sharon
Don't know, the building report came third hand, our buildings secretary asked the police...

There has been some pretty significant looking excavation and piledriving going on all around it, so it wouldn't be entirely surprising if the foundations have been shaken up.