May 10 2024

Wheatley Group and Collective Architecture have won consent from Glasgow City Council planners to convert a B-listed Art Moderne hotel in Glasgow's east end into apartments.

The Bellgrove Hotel, synonymous with the city's homelessness crisis from its time as a short-stay hostel, will be converted into 14 affordable flats, eight of which will be wheelchair accessible.

Surviving 1930s features will be integrated into the new development, notably the distinctive bands of coloured tiles which decorate the front and east-facing facades overlooking the Gallowgate. The main building will be joined by 56 additional flats for mid-market rent on adjoining land, employing a palette of buff brick cladding and a recessed brick soldier course.

Project architect Neal Whitaker said: “The social history of the Bellgrove Hotel is well-known. Less widely recognised is the architectural significance of the building, which is one of only two Listed buildings in the area and one of the handful of surviving Art Moderne buildings in Glasgow.  

“By retaining the architecturally significant front portion of the building, this significant landmark will become part of an ambitious regeneration of the area and a symbol for positive change. The new-build block on the brownfield site to the East will incorporate subtle references to the moderne style, creating an architectural dialogue with the hotel building and a strong identity for the development as a whole.”

Building work is scheduled to commence later this year for completion in spring 2026. 

3 Comments

#1 Posted by Fat Bloke on Tour on 10 May 2024 at 11:18 AM

Stinks of tokenism -- more of the building will be demolished than kept.

And it gets worse -- 80% of the project will be bang average Lego block flats that are the new Glesga norm.

Used to be blonde versus red regarding colour -- now it is flat roofs versus Tefal frontage.

Not good.

Plus no mention of the financials -- early figures would have choked a horse so things must have moved on for the worse and the horse is now Pedigree Chum.

Plus so much for mixed tenure -- one block is affordable while the rest is mid market. Not so much a poverty door but now a complete poverty block.

Might be an issue that the brains trust in the social housing sector might want to engage with / address.

#2 Posted by devilish advocaat on 10 May 2024 at 15:13 PM

#1 - what would you have done differently? Seems like they've got most things wrong here, eh?

#3 Posted by Roddy_ on 10 May 2024 at 15:46 PM

The original masterplan by the same designers had - god knows why - turning heads and parking directly adjacent to the Gallowgate in what could only be described as a blatantly anti-urban move.

This has been amended but we still get a rejection of the street by a substantial set-back of the new-build element by a linear strip of green that no-one will own and which one stongly suspects will be very poorly used. This is not, I woud submit, how to regenerate a street that is begging for street life, for shops and at a very basic level ; passive surveillance.

A similar anti-urban paradigm is almost complete at the Calton 'Villlage'. One wonders why, with so many really decent precedents in the city we are resorting to this retrograde form of masterplanning? . This is another part of the city that desperately needs quality design and thinking and which is shamefully absent. I don't really blame the designers when the city seems to have abdicated all semblance of design governance in pursuit of the 'open for business' agenda.

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