Wringing the cloth dry -- you can't fault their ambition.
Just a case that the existing food units aren't renting.
Plus 200m of path is not much of an upgrade to the park.

Overall -- more spend removed from the city centre and the council is in cheap date territory if that is all the investment they are getting in the park.

And all the while the original Easterhouse town centre is in hibernation and the leaks in the Platform roof get bigger with every passing decade.

Easterhouse deserves better.

For every yin it seems there is a yang.

From sleek black Neo-Deco tower on a brown field site to squat Big-Box-random-shapery on the edge of town.

It’s not brownfield. The whole area was part of Auchinlea park, a remnant of Provanhall estate, the NW corner was a stone quarry until the start of WWII, which is where the park name comes from . The Doctors surgery was built in the mid 1980s, then MFI, which became Morrisons in the early 2000s. The Fort was built behind Morrisons and took what was grassland and new growth woods.

Before any more upgrades and expansion to the site, surely the M8 junctions both East and west bound need to be upgraded to allow the queuing traffic to exit the motorway safely. No end of accidents and near misses when the inside lane is blocked with traffic queuing.

Far too many cars as it is. Also new renovated Provanhall house. What a disaster. It now looks vandalised compared to its original look. So whoever passed the so called upgrade deserves to be sacked.

@#3 Sven
I wonder sometimes if folk actually read the posts here - you have missed the point (the point being same architects). The brownfield site is the one here:

https://www.urbanrealm.com/news/11290/Neo_Art_Deco_student_tower_takes_Glasgow_back_to_black.html

And hence reference to Neo Art Deco. If you get this, you should hopefully get the reference to Big Boxes too.

Bowling alley, escape rooms, and laser quest? That's three failed early 90's business ideas right there. What next? An ice rink?

Surprised there hasn't been more comment about placemaking and masterplans -- the staples of Glesga architectural discussions throughout the ages.

The Fort has been something of a sleeper hit for both the city and the area in that it has generated economic activity in the strangest of areas. Very little discussion of why this has happened and at what cost plus the inability of the civic and social realm to work with it.

To push a particular hobby horse -- the growth of the Fort is in sharp contrast with the failing efforts of the public sector to keep a fully functioning roof above the books in the library section of the Platform complex.

Great facility -- well used -- let down by the jobsworth / excuse monger management attitude this is currently destroying the public sector.

Plus I wonder who the architect was that styled sorry designed such a poorly performing roof in the first place?

Its kind of as if we never really ever had policy or guidance to bar this kind of development. Our friend above has stumbled onto a pretty relevant question - just what are the supposed regenerative effects of such developments? A cursory scan on Google Earth reveals the sterile edges on Gartloch Road ,Auchinlea Way and others. Futher afield reveals plenty of vacant and blighted sites that seem to have been vacant and blighted for as long as the shopping centre's existence. No real high streets supporting small plots with local, small businesses. No real aggregation or agglomeration of public local services. No real civic spaces that are well cared for and where you can elect to dwell without having to spend money. It is the embodiment of spatial inequality.
How are we to heal already fractured and severed urban tissue by perpetuating this kind of car-dependant territory? Many make the argument about jobs. There are undboutedly jobs here, but how many are full-time and decent living wage jobs? I'd love to see some research about what the economic impacts are on the adjacent areas - here and at Silverburn. Of course, the reason that both are located in deprived areas is that the sites were purchased for a song with the promise that they would become, in time, the 'local' town centres. This has not come to pass.
A small extension of the kind proposed will have a proportionately small effect based on the presence of the rest of the Fort but will inevitably increase car journeys and help bolster all of the detrimental effects of this kind of development. One suspects this will fly through planning (it would be a brave planner to knock this back) but were at a stage where we need to lay down real markers and point to a trajectory in planning that says very clearly that this is not the future.

This is the future because this is what the public wants. Concentration of accessible shops and leisure facilities in a nice environment that is delivering private sector investment into the area.

Does it conform to the 1950's plans of GCC to build Glesga overspill housing within the city boundary -- no but the world has moved on and to stand and carp is to show up your own inadequacies rather than highlight those of others who are actually doing something.

The public sector needs to review and update its efforts to develop Easterhouse into a growing / expanding community that meets the needs of a maturing and more sophisticated population.

Using Easterhouse as a people warehouse full of care homes / assisted living space / temporary shelters / supported housing needs constant investment in both the housing and the people that live there but that does not happen no matter the state of the public sector finances.

Efforts have been made -- the college / The Bridge / The Platform but it is a case of launch and forget as no effort is put into their maintenance and little into their upkeep.

And then you have the waste of the digger frenzy between Wardie Road and Aberdalgie Road which turned waste ground into posh waste ground plus a stream with a rocky bottom. The site huts were of a better standard than the supported accommodation across the road.

Huge public sector spend to improve the quality of the long grass in an area that desperately needs spending that supports the community and its future rather than salve the consciences of a self serving / self indulgent middle class hobby horsers.

Provenhall and its "upgrade" -- need to have a look.

@#3 the majority of the Fort is built on two former quarries that had been used as landfill

I hate this mall. Up on a hill, exposed to the wind,rain and snow. You are cold, wet and windswept before you get to the shops from the car parks. At least in the city centre you have a great selection of pubs and restaurants and less exposed as the buildings provide some shelter.

The original concept and design for Glasgow Fort (the stainless shells etc) was by an American practice. Cooper Cromar were employed as local practice to deliver that scheme.