FINAL approval has been for a 130-flat development at a historic former school in Dennistoun.
City planners have given the go-ahead for the proposals by Barony Homes which involve B-listed Golfhill School in Circus Drive and the neighbouring former playing field on Firpark Street.
Listed building consent was given several years ago for demolition of all but the façade and a number of key architectural features of the school with creation of 18 flats.
Council officials have now given permission for the whole development following the finalising of legal agreements. The other properties will be in new-build blocks.
The planning application had set out the company’s desire to “preserve and enhance the setting of the listed building and structures”, but “years of groundwater action had resulted in severe structural movement and partial collapse, which ultimately led to the abandonment of the building for the purposes for which it was constructed.”
It continued: “Whilst demolition would have been an obvious answer, the opportunity for cross-subsidy funding from the new-build development on the adjoining site enabled a strategy for a facade retention of the principal southern elevation and the key architectural features of the east and west flanks to the octagonal towers.”
The school, which was designed by architect Alexander Nesbit Paterson, on behalf of the Glasgow School Board, opened in 1902 and has been on the “buildings at risk” register since 2010.
The new development, a tenemental style mix of blocks, will see a total of 134 flats, built in three phases, on the school grounds complete with car parking, plus green spaces, including orchards, and paths across the site which will connect adjacent roads.
William Roddie, director of family-owned Spectrum Properties, parent company of Barony Homes, said: “We are delighted that we are now breaking ground on this important new development for the Dennistoun area which will offer the best of modern living with bright, open plan living space and quality homes in one of the city’s most vibrant and diverse areas.
“Our plans will create areas which are desirable to both new and existing residents to pass through and linger in, an improvement on the overgrown and unsafe areas which currently exist on site.”
He added: “The Golfhill School site had been closed because of subsidence and had lain unused for some 12 years before we bought it nearly four years ago.
“It is a substantial task to retain what can be salvaged of the building, including expensive and technically challenging façade retention but, as a local company, we feel an obligation to the people of Dennistoun to maintain a link to a history which means so much to so many people.”
