St Enoch Centre (Glasgow)

United Kingdom / Scotland / Glasgow / St Enoch Square, 55
 shopping mall  Add category
Opened in 1989 by the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, the St Enoch Centre is still the largest glass roofed structure in Europe. Stands on the site of the old St Enoch Railway Station (which closed as part of the Beeching cuts in the 1960s). A highly state of the art building at the time, the mall is heated and lit by natural daylight for 80% of the year, the complex includes a 7-floor multi-storey car park and around 100 shops. British Home Stores and Boots were the original anchor tenants, although the former closed in 2016. Tesco is now a major anchor tenant which moved in as part of the 2008 extension.

The ice rink shut in 1999 to squeeze more shops in, and the massive food court puts the one in the Buchanan Galleries to shame. Yet another major revamp in 2008-09 saw it get the first Scottish branch of Hamley's, although it was subsequently downsized.

As with the slightly newer Buchanan Galleries, the once lauded complex now faces an uncertain future as mega shopping malls become increasingly obsolete in a post-pandemic world. The old BHS store was converted into a cinema, with mixed success. Long term plans now exist to gradually demolish the structure in phased stages, replacing it with new leisure and residential structures.
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Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Enoch_Centre
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Coordinates:   55°51'25"N   4°15'10"W

Comments

  • It wasn't demolished to be replaced by the shopping centre. It was closed by the Beeching Axe and demolished, then the centre was built in its place. Beeching actually wanted to close and demolish Central and St Enoch stations and replace them with a single station further to the south, which would have been further away from the city centre, and probably built of concrete and thus being an eyesore. London Euston and Birmingham New Street proved the '60s planners could not build train stations, and Glasgow proved they could not regenerate a city.
This article was last modified 2 years ago