Tradeston Redevelopment

[gap74]

From today's Evening Times:

City Ghost Town to be Reborn

http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/hi/news/5055925.html

Three huge blocks of apartments will be built - designed by individual architects - between Clyde Place, Kingston Street, West Street and Commerce Street, along with office space, retail units, a creche, fitness club and bars and eateries.
Clyde Place at the waterfront will be pedestrianised and a landscaped area linked to the northern bank by a £22million footbridge. The flats will range in price and size to create a diverse neighbourhood for up to 4000 people.

But....

... it has been held up by a row over two B-listed buildings from the 1870s. The plan is to demolish one, the Beco Building, a former draper's warehouse, as it would cost so much to renovate, and transform another, Kingston House, an ex-lodging house, into flats but with another building between it and the river. Historic Scotland have objected and First Minister Jack McConnell will determine what happens with both buildings."

Do we really want another development consisting solely of bland new flats like the ones in the artists impressions above? It's bad enough that the Clydeside warehouses were lost a few years ago in a storm, but to demolish a perfectly good Victorian warehouse just cos it's not as cheap to convert as it is to build from scratch is a disgrace! Retaining and refurbishing these buildings would be an excellent way to link with the history of the area!

There are also concerns about building so many dwellings without ancillary facilities, which are often promised but slow to arrive. Something I've noticed about such developments like Glasgow Harbour, where the hell do folk go for a pint of milk, or a meal, or a shandy...?

Gary

[PlasticDel]

Do we really want another development consisting solely of bland new flats like the ones in the artists impressions above? It's bad enough that the Clydeside warehouses were lost a few years ago in a storm, but to demolish a perfectly good Victorian warehouse just cos it's not as cheap to convert as it is to build from scratch is a disgrace! Retaining and refurbishing these buildings would be an excellent way to link with the history of the area!

There are also concerns about building so many dwellings without ancillary facilities, which are often promised but slow to arrive.

"Do we really want another development consisting solely of bland new flats like the ones in the artists impressions above?"

Would you rather have for -lack of a better description- a 'midden' with nothing in it? OK so perhaps midden is harsh (perhaps!) but shiny new flats are better over crumbling old redundant low-amenity warehouses any day.
Sure, there is the (POSSIBLE, although probable) loss of a listed building or two and I would hope that the building could be integrated in to the development as is usually the hope form most of us, but it's not always possible and in any case is THIS building really that great? Did you really care about it or value it before now.

I like what has been done with one of the old red-brick warehouses near-by but that isn't always possible either.

An area this close to the city centre should be well kept and thriving. That the point of the nice new bridge, to allow areas to link up and encourage development and improvements.

As for the "ancillary facilities" that are often slow to arrive...

Three huge blocks of apartments will be built - designed by individual architects - between Clyde Place, Kingston Street, West Street and Commerce Street, along with office space, retail units, a creche, fitness club and bars and eateries.

I would imagine the LA has people working on it to ensure that adequate facilities are installed, they usually have criteria for things like that and I can't imagine it would be given outline planning permission if the developer hadn't included some facilites for 2500 people or whatever.

People here can go to the retail units for a pint of milk and the bars and eateries for a shandy.

[jack]

The reason Tradeston is a dead area at the moment is because it is single use, If the city wants this area to be a thriving community and an attractive extension to the city the area will have to be mixed use, not a token gesture shop or creche but the whole area requires to be planned properly. The reason the merchant city works so well visually at the moment is the mix of old buildings and shiny new one, older buildings mixed in with new make for a visually interesting area, and one that is likely to last.
I agree the riverside developments that have been built so far, are a joke. Glasgow harbour residents use the bp garage beside the expressway to buy their carton of milk. So yes the council will give planning permission for developments that do not provide facilities for the residents. Tradeston could be an amazing extension of the city centre, but the older buildings need to be kept, and developers should not be allowed to hold us to ransom, why should they be allowed to knock these buildings down, hasn't glasgow knocked enough buildings down.

[gap74]

Perhaps I worded it wrongly, I'm not at all against this redevelopment, and agree that Tradeston as it is ain't exactly an area anyone goes to if they can't at all avoid it....

But, really, in terms of quality of design, does that artrists impression really differ from the dozens of other flatted residential developments that have sprung up in other such areas all over the city? Have architects and developers really lost all desire to create something that might be celebrated in the future, a place where folk actually want to live - as the rest of the article says, units in other such schemes in the city are going unsold, and whilst I don't claim blandness is solely responsible, it certainly can't help.

Not everyone wants to live in a flat, no matter how well appointed it is, and there can only be a finite market for such developments. And the planning system seems impotent to prevent such developments being flung up with no regard for either demand, or facilities. The promised shops and eateries do indeed smack of tokenism - a new development of 1,500 houses near me in a corner of the city has been allowed under the provisio it comes with a new school and a single playing pitch situated a quarter of a mile away. Is this sustainable in the long term? How does this fit in with the goal of stopping people having to drive elsewhere for a paper?

As for the listed buildings, there are only two of them in an area otherwise decimated and robbed of all signs of its historical identity - it's not asking too much, given the volume of gap sites in the area in which new build can be erected, to insist that some small link to that past is kept, if only to help give a fledgling new community some sense of where it grew up from.

I like them!

Anyways, just my tuppence worth! Back to the grind...

Gary

[bankie73]

Hi everyone, does anybody know what the large red brick building that stands on the corner of centre street and cook street in tradeston was used for? I've searched everywhere but can't find a thing about it.

Thanks

[HollowHorn]

[gap74]

PASTMAP on the RCAHMS website lists a telephone exchange being in that area, could that be it?

[bankie73]

Could be, I've searched scran and looked through John Hume's Industrial Archaeology of Glasgow, but can find no mention of it.

[Fossil]

tis a strange building that one

[gap74]

I'm pretty certain that's what it looks like, has that kind of solid look of a phone exchange to it. Pastmap also cites Hume as saying that there was a cotton mill in the area, but that's marked as where the white building behind it is.

[gap74]

Here's something I didn't know from the history section of the BT website:

1901

The first municipal telephone exchange was inaugurated in Glasgow on 28 March.

http://www.btplc.com/Thegroup/BTsHistory/1901-1911.htm

Gary

[bankie73]

Thanks for the info Gary

[crusty_bint]

I'm not saying thats not or wasnt an exchange but the present exchange is on Nelson Street on the block between Tredeston and Centre Streets

[gap74]

Wouldn't surprise me, the accuracy of PASTMAP's dots leaves something to be desired!

Might be that the present one is a more modern replacement, and that this hulking brute of a building dates back to the days when loads of Glaswegian wifies manually connected your call with wires and plugs!

But I'm as curious as anyone as to what this building is, and would welcome definite confirmation!

Gary

[viceroy]

Hi everyone, does anybody know what the large red brick building that stands on the corner of centre street and cook street in tradeston was used for? I've searched everywhere but can't find a thing about it.

Thanks

Further to earlier posts, it was indeed a telephone exchange, built around 1935.

Full details can be found here