Council Approves Plan To Create Business Innovation Centre In Merchant City

Glasgow City Council's Executive Committee have approved plans for the Council to enter into a partnership with the GO Group to refurbish the Bell Street Cleaning Depot and create a Business Innovation Centre in its place.

The innovation centre would offer around 4,200sq m of small business space over five floors, providing drop-in space for business, pre-incubation and hot-desk facilities, incubation space for growing businesses, training space for resident businesses, other individuals and enterprises and ICT facilities for distance learning.

This proposal is the latest in a number of projects that has seen £16m invested since 2001 by the Council through its Merchant City Business and Arts Property Strategy.


Other examples of this strategy include the soon-to-open cultural industry business centre at Trongate 103, the leasing of the Briggait to WASPS Ltd to create a new workshop and artists’ studio complex there, and the refurbishment of various Council-owned ground floor retail units and properties within the Tontine building, King Street and the Trongate.

The capital receipt of £535,000 from the sale of the depot will go towards the costs of a replacement cleaning depot in Hunter Street. The additional amount required to fund the building of the new depot will come from the Better Glasgow Fund.

Councillor George Ryan, Executive Member for Business and the Economy at Glasgow City Council, said: "The creation of a business innovation centre in this location will provide a supportive base for new and growing firms in Glasgow. A purpose-built environment such as this help to maintain and develop the city’s small business infrastructure, protecting and creating jobs."

(GK/JM)