How can 'Buchanan Quarter' be described as public space when there are security guards on the doors and the entire place is shut at 6pm every evening?

Buchanan Galleries, as it exists now is a shopping mall, spreading like a cancerous growth throughout the heart of the city, gobbling up more and more area all the time.

The now aborted George Square redesign could have done well to have included the need for some sort of rampart with which to repel the World Class Shopping Destination flubbing out all over it. Get an advertising banner on it and I am sure the council would have been all over it...

Mr Koolbag makes a good point - a huge multi-function structure, much of which is off limits for extended periods, sprawling across large parts of Glasgow's centre. Has this not been vilified and proven to be a mistake in the likes of Cumbernauld, Glenrothes and Stirling, or does this not matter as long as it's shiny? How will the likes of GFT compete with yet another multi-plex so close?

From the the image of the link bridge I guess the message the 'architectural statement' is intended to convey is: "Don't Use Sunbeds". Seriously, why is a 'link bridge' necessary? Having squeezed an additional 1700 parking spaces next to a train station in the heart of the city I guess it's too big an ask to get the motorists to walk to the shops on streets.

Hang on a minute, wasn't Queen Street station about to be upgraded by Network Rail anyway? I'm not a great fan of their bland glass atrium proposals, but at least they didn't make one of Scotland's busiest stations a mere adjunct to a characterless and rampaging monster-mall or stuff a mind-boggling 1700 parking spaces on top.

Sorry, my bad - looks like this is part of the same scheme. Have to say it's a pretty damning indictment on our economic model if the only way we're told we can upgrade our transport infrastructure and public realm is to allow them to be appended and subsumed by private interests.

This is just another example of how GCC continue to rip out the heart of the city I love. How much are they putting into the kitty for this expansion? 50 million?
I am old enough to remember when Argyle Street going towards the KIngston Bridge area was a thriving shopping area- now it looks like the Luftwaffe have just left a calling card. This will only get worse after the felling of the White Elephant "Jumeriah" hotel. This part of the city is a real mess. What of the Trongate? CPO's for every small business and intractable tenant and yet none for a Selfridges that has been responsible for the destruction of half a street? Sauchiehall Street is in real need of a tart up in places as well, as does Renfield Street and Union Street. Our city is shrinking at an alarming rate, with accelerated centralization into this much vaunted "Buchanan Quarter". After a recent visit to the continent, where many cities are refreshingly free of Americana malls, most noticeably Paris, who wants to visit a city with one street? One street with the same shops as every other city in every other country?
With fifty million or so we could see real investment in the built infrastructure of many of our great streets. Instead we get an expansion of a faceless shopping mall. Our cities should be places where we can have an alternative experience to the car centred everything-under-one-roof shopping convenience of soulless malls. We have inherited a great Victorian/Edwardian built heritage that should be the any of just about any other city in the world and yet we largely turn our backs on it and let it go to ruin, all for the sake of an a-historical future of homogenised globalisation...as I I hae said before: you sometimes have to go back to go forward. Why are we continually saddled by a bunch of no-hopers at the city chambers who are incapable of realising just how great our city actually is? It's as if they actually despise our city, or they are somehow embarrassed by it. When in reality they should be on the roofops shouting about how great it is and how much better it can be. World class in potential. Maybe if they did go up on the rooftops they might just see how great our built enironment actually is. That 50m may have been a start towards preserving much of that greatness- these present decisions will become a massive regret sometime in the near future...when we are all shunted and huddled in one vast shopping mall that could be anywhere from Abu Dhabi to San Diego.

PS

Egbert- don't get me started on nationalisation, particularly of public utilities and transport...gggrrrhhh!

Tell me this is a bad joke! If this gets planning consent serious questions have to be raised! There are empty retail units all over the city, the high street is dying a slow undignified death, and they're planning to build more??? Surely the 300 million could be used for wiser more forward thinking projects?? Pure fast buck short term benefit bullshit, will the forward thinkers please stand up, this a complete farce!!!

*Correction: Glasgow City Council are giving up £80m to a private shopping mall. EIGHTY MILLION!

Lord save us in our hour of need

This is diabolical news, and surely the final nail in the coffin for retail on Union St, Renfield St, Trongate et al. What happened to the Golden Z? Now we'll have a Golden I and absolutely nothing worth venturing beyond Buchanan Street for - dozens upon dozens of landmark traditional buildings throughout the city, all with To Let signs outside their ground floor windows. Nice work, councillors.

Instead of the Golden Z we'll get: The small aluminium i or the tin L, maybe even a bronze dot? The tainted and tinsellated speckle...and then we'll get the likes of Mathieson saying: "But we're better off with a golden pluke than a silver Zed" or some such guffery...

Wonky, I'd vote for you.

I agree with all the comments so far posted about short-sightedness and destruction of the rest of the city centre. When were we asked if we wanted this?