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GO-Ahead Given For ‘Ambitious’ Plans Integrating Historic ‘Missing Piece’ Building Into The Barclays Glasgow Campus

11 December, 2020 | News

BARCLAYS Bank’s plans to breathe new life into the historic Beco building at its massive new campus at Tradeston have been approved.

Glasgow City planners have give permission for “ambitious and exciting” proposals to refurbish, alter and extend the Category B-listed structure in Kingston Street.

A view of the Beco in 2018 before work began

A design statement included with the planning application: “These proposals complete Barclays Glasgow Campus, which together with separate office and residential buildings delivered by Drum Property Group, involve a major redevelopment of three city centre blocks that have lain undeveloped for over 20 years.

“Barclays masterplan is being jointly delivered with Drum Property Group with six out of the eight buildings and the majority of the public realm and landscape works forming Barclays’s Glasgow Campus.

“The Beco Building (and its curtilage) is the only building on these three city blocks that falls outwith the original masterplan site. It is therefore ‘the missing piece of the jigsaw’, in terms of completing a coherent world-class urban campus.

“The ultimate proposal for the building is to house a Barclays’ Eagle Lab and branch in the lower floors with flexible and creative workspace for Barclays at upper levels.”

The statement continued: “Our approach from the beginning, supported through pre-application discussions with the planning department and Historic Environment Scotland, has been to broadly maintain the existing principles of use and historic character of the building, with a sensitive adaptation and refurbishment and some exciting and unashamedly new interventions to the rear, that enable the building to be brought back to life and engage it fully with the wider campus.”

“Barclays’ Campus Glasgow, which forms the major component of the previously named Buchanan Wharf Masterplan, was designed from the outset in the hope that the Beco Building would be acquired and able to be renovated/redeveloped at some point.

“We have begun to peel back the existing layers of the ground floor facade and reveal what exists beneath, so far purely as a desktop exercise, but believe we may be in a position to restore more of the existing detailing and elaborate structure than initially anticipated.”

The Beco Building was built in 1878 as a drapers warehouse. It currently has ground floor shop units with derelict upper floors.

The land beside it is earmarked for Building 4 of the campus which is identified as being the last phase, possibly a number of years after the others. Landscaping, including a walled garden, is proposed until construction.

Emergency repairs have been carried out to make the Beco building wind and watertight.

Barclays are also incorporating the other listed building on the site, Kingston House.

The whole development will provide more than 1,000,000 square feet of prime Grade A office space, more than 300 homes, an early years facility, a mix of local amenities and transformational infrastructure works and major public spaces.

A view of the site in 2018 before work began

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