Appeal over hotel plan for listed Glasgow building rejected

Developers behind rejected plans to knock down a listed Glasgow building and create a 19-storey hotel have failed to overturn the decision.

Regent Property wanted to demolish a B-listed former printworks on Maxwell Street and use the site for a Radisson hotel with a rooftop bar.

Glasgow City Council refused the application in November last year due to the size of the proposed development and its impact on the surrounding conservation area. Objectors opposed the loss of the old McCorquodale’s Printers building.

The firm urged the Scottish Government to step in and approve the scheme, with the appeal claiming no alternative viable project, of a different scale or design, exists.

“The alternative is continued dereliction: a site left to inevitable decay, contributing nothing to the city centre, offering no public benefit, and actively diminishing the character of this part of the conservation area,” it added.

Regent Property has been seeking listed building and conservation area consent for the demolition work as well as planning permission for the erection of the hotel. But a reporter, appointed by ministers, has now dismissed the appeals.

Susannah Moore, the reporter, decided the principle of a hotel is “generally acceptable” and there is “justification for the demolition of the listed and unlisted buildings on site”.

However, she found the “proposed design, by reason of the building’s massing, scale and height, fails to respond sensitively to the streetscape… and would result in harm to the character and appearance of the central conservation area and the setting of nearby listed buildings”.

The reporter refused listed building and conservation area consent as there are “no acceptable redevelopment proposals in place and no indication that an acceptable redevelopment proposal is likely to be found in the short or even medium term”.

She said the loss of the buildings, which would create a gap site, would “result in unacceptable harm to the character and appearance of the central conservation area”.

The reporter had decided the applicant had shown the listed building was “incapable of meaningful repair and that there is justification to warrant the demolition of the building on this basis”.

“I also conclude the submitted evidence is sufficient to reach the conclusion that the repair of the building is not economically viable,” she added.

The project would have involved the demolition of both an unlisted building at 40 Fox Street and the B-listed property at 90 Maxwell Street, which are near Glasgow’s St Enoch centre.

Regent wanted to provide 159 hotel rooms and 77 serviced apartments, with Radisson Hotels lined up as the operator. A rooftop bar and restaurant was proposed.

Before councillors turned down the applications in November, planning officials reported the “economic viability challenges of the site are noted and understood, as are the benefits of redeveloping an underutilised and somewhat neglected site, but in this instance these are not considered to outweigh the negative townscape, heritage and environmental effects of the proposed building”.