Drumchapel Shopping Centre.

Doorstop · Drumchapel Shopping Centre.

I've been doing a bit of research on the Drumchapel shopping Centre development or the lack of therein and the trail has led to the local planning officer, a Mr David Gibson, bloody nice bloke who this very morning took a sizeable chunk out of his day to relay to me some of the fact of the new development of the centre as it stands.

The development is a partnership between Glasgow council and a private development concern, PPG Metro based in Edinburgh.

The actual work on site was originally planned as a 60 month phased development involving demolition (obviously already partially completed) and then a new build of both retail accommodation and new local government offices which include a new Civic Hub and more specifically a new Police station as Strathclyde police are finding the logistics of policing Drumchapel area problematic with their existing infrastructure.

Land for the new Police station has already been allocated and accounted for in the Strathclyde Polices' budget as this is apparently a priority as far as both the Police Regulatory bodies and the council are concerned. Mr Gibson added that the new Civic Hub build was, at present, under review as to size, function etc due to present financial restraints placed upon the council.

The rest of the Centres' development is, due to factors outwith the councils' control ie credit crunch etc, in a state of flux in as much as retail park layout etc is concerned.

The main player in the old Centre was and is obviously Somerfield. This retailer currently occupies a 40,000 foot premises that, according to Mr Gibson, has been struggling to function at half capacity.
The plan was to, after demolition of the old Somerfield premises, construct an entirely new building of 20,000 square feet to house the new 'Somerfield' concern.

This plan was thrown into uncertainty by Somerfields' corporate buy out by firstly the Co-Op and then subsequently Morrisons .. this uncertainty has unfortunately had a knock on effect on the subsequent phases of development as they are all pivotal on the main player having a finalised plan.

So in short the new Drumchapel Arndale centre looks to have a new, smaller supermarket (Probably a Somerfield, possibly a Morrisons), a new main Civic Hub or Council Office and a new main Police station for Drumchapel itself and the surrounding (Garscadden etc) districts. Other retailers have been in talks with PPG Metroabout taking up the remainder of any retail outlets but Mr. Gibson was somewhat reluctant to divulge who they actually were as the proposed development of their phases of the retail park were the ones undergoing dynamic changes in plans at the moment.

Mr. Gibson has promised to keep me appraised of any developments by email so I'll post them here as and when I get them.

Stuball

Nice work.... got any pictures of the centre as is or was?

Doorstop

I have somewhere .. I'll get hunting and post them up.

sputnik

well done ds,always good to hear it from the horses mouth so to speak.drumchapel residents have been shat on from a great height as far as facilities are concerned and really do deserve better.

AlanM

Robert Pool is the man to see for photos of the centre as was, he's got loads

glasgowken

There's quite a few old pics on SCRAM.

Alex Glass

Well done Doorstop for taking the initiative to find out about this development.

I am sure that it was the subject of planning consent a while back. There may be a presentation in the Planning file

Doorstop

Call me cynical, but I think the decision to construct the new Social and Child Welfare Services building in the centre of Drumchapel (directly opposite the Arndale actually) and give it a glass frontage could only be described as ill advised at worst, optimistic at best.

Give that lot 5 minutes.

tombro

Don't be too harsh, Ken.

My mid-fifties memories of early days in 'theDrum' (Airgold Drive) are great, given they didn't really build the schemes with many necessary facilities.

We had lots of vans, I think a Co-op van (a converted single-deck bus) was one of them, that travelled the streets but the nearest shopping facilities were at the top of Achamore Road on one side and somewhere just off Kinfauns Drive on the other side.

There was a Library over on Hecla Avenue and I vaguely remember going with Mum to pay rent at a Factor's Office over there, too.

We played in the streets, in the backyards and the area was ours with few cars and the buses (Corporation, red and Blue) mainly plying Kinfauns Drive, Dunkenny Road and Achamore Road.

We had the various woods to play in and we stayed out late at night in the Summer Holidays.

Things most probably did change over the years (I left for Australia at the end of 1960) but perhaps the regression of 'theDrum' was more due to deteriorating economic conditions rather than anything else !

Tombro

Doorstop

I spent my formative years (late 60's through to the late eighties) in the Drum myself Tombro mate and things have changed.

Loads of hard drugs now with all the incumbent problems that arrive with them. There are those that say drugs have been in the Drum for as long as there have been drugs but I can categorically say that up until the mid to late eighties hard drugs (such as heroin etc) were absent from the scene as the top end distributors of recreational pharmaceuticals in the Drum had a perverted sense of civic duty and meted out severe retribution to tertiary dealers who dared bring it into the scheme to purvey.

This seems to have changed since the late eighties/early nineties and the Arndale centre is awash with skagged out wastrels and is a sad and sorry representation of it's former self.

The library is still up and running in more or less it's old format although it does now provide internet access for free to the less fortunate inhabitants of the scheme .. the factors office is still there as a building but has long since stopped it's function as a factors/council HQ. Last time I looked it was the Social Work hub but I think even that function has been abandoned in favour of the new purpose built construction I pictured above.

There are a fair few new build dwellings in the scheme which should uplift the place but I can't help but feel sad for the demise of the Drum of old as a lot of the community spirit seems to have drained away alongside the development of newer, drier, warmer housing. I know it sounds like a perverse bastardisation of logic but that's the overwhelming impression.

Strange.