Buchanan Galleries (Glasgow)

 shopping mall  Add category

Mega shopping centre opened in 1999 and challenged the St. Enoch Centre as the city's premier mall. John Lewis is the anchor store, but there is a big Boots, H&M and Next as well. The building was originally touted in the late 1980s when the Concert Hall was being planned - the two were supposed to be the same development, but thanks to a nasty economic recession at the time, construction didn't get underway proper until late 1995.

An ultimately doomed expansion plan was touted in the 2010s - entailing building a multi-storey car park over the top of Queen Street station's existing short stay car park, demolishing the original car park to the east and building an extension to the mall which would have extended John Lewis to incorporate a Waitrose supermarket. However the project was canned indefinately when the owners of the St Enoch Centre threatened a legal challenge at Glasgow City Council's involvement in the plans (or more specifically its dubious means of raising the capital) , and the credit crunch saw off any further progress on the scheme. However, as of late 2013 serious preparatory work has restarted, with the submission of the planning application to Glasgow City Council. The plans remained on hold as the complex celebrated its 20th birthday in March of 2019, but now seem cancelled completely by the coronavirus pandemic and its aftermath.

Despite being relatively young, the long term fate of the complex now looks bleak as the demand for brick-and-mortar retail stores dwindles in a post-pandemic, post-online shopping world. An ambitious plan to demolish it and return the area to residential use was briefly mooted in 2023, but this has now been abandoned and less destructive means of repurposing the building are now being planned.