Glasgow city centre 'architectural masterpiece' up for sale
As part of the process, the council is looking for a developer to come forward with a proposal to bring it back into meaningful use.
READ NEXT: Out of school care centre warned it doesn't meet legal standards
Applications are invited with a deadline of October 17.
The brochure by Ryden, under instruction from the council, describes the six-storey Union Street building as 'a unique architectural and historic asset' with the council prioritising its 'repair, repurposing, and future active reuse'.
In February this year, the council agreed to look at CPO powers to take it over after decades of inaction from the current owner.
Its intricate and distinctive stonework is currently hidden behind scaffolding.
The building was built between 1870 and 1872, a 'hallmark' of Thomson's distinctive Greek Revival style.
The brochure states: 'It remains internationally recognised as a masterpiece of Victorian architecture.'
Last month, it was decided an incentive of £150,000 will be on offer to the developer chosen to revamp the historic landmark.
READ NEXT:Work on West End street to start next month and last two years
The building is currently owned by two companies — Union Street Developments and Union Street Properties — both run by Dundee businessman Derek Souter and his partners.
They will also be invited to submit proposals to the council and are able to sell the property voluntarily at any point until the CPO is secured.
Councillor Ruairi Kelly, Convener for Built Heritage, Housing and Development at Glasgow City Council, said: 'This is a key milestone in our efforts to return the Egyptian Halls to full life and restore their rightful place as an architectural treasure of national significance.
'Securing a commercial operator to take on the repair and reuse of the Halls is a core part of the CPO process which began earlier this year. In gauging the market interest we'll know what the opportunities for the future of this architectural gem can be.
'Right now, the transformation of our city centre is gathering real pace. Giving the city's built heritage new purposes and new futures is part of that and I've no doubt the Egyptian Halls can be a centrepiece in the Glasgow of the 21st century.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Herald Scotland
8 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
Is this Victorian relic the answer to Scotland's frayed yarn story?
But having been stored for years - a restoration project that happened - to some, the old S. Walker & Sons carding machine was little more than scrap metal or at best, a museum piece. Black cheviot fleece is loaded into the Victorian carding machine (Image: Highland Wool) Now though, having finally been torn apart and rebuilt, missing parts replaced with modern equivalents and driven by a couple's dogged determination to rebuild what was lost, it has become a symbol of hope for Scottish yarn. Named 'Caroline', the carding machine now sits proudly in an old barn on Donna and Donald Gillies' farm at Argay in Sutherland, alongside a second-hand Belfast picker – a machine that untangles knots from fleece and prepares it for the carding process. Together with huge washing tubs – stage one is cleaning the muck and vegetation off the fleeces - the machines are the beating heart of a plan by the two 'accidental' farmers to give small-scale shepherds like them somewhere on Scottish soil to process their fleece. In the past few weeks, 'Caroline' reached a major milestone when, with the machine's wheels turning once again and test runs complete, Highland Wool mill finally opened for business. Although still operating at a reduced capacity while the mill finds its feet, if all goes to plan before long Caroline should be thundering through eight times the amount of fleece it's currently handling. The mill is helping to fill a gap that's been growing since the Industrial Revolution swept away Scotland's cottage industry of wool production in favour of big machines and bigger mills – mostly in northern England. Centralisation meant mainland Scotland fell into the habit of sending its wool south. Donna Gilllies of Highland Wool with her Hebridean sheep (Image: Highland Wool) And with fewer mills and longer distances to travel, the farmers' costs soared, waiting lists for wool processing grew and some simply gave up. The issue has been heightened in recent years as demand for quality Scottish-produced yarn has soared at the same time as farmers, faced with receiving just pennies per fleece, were finding it more economical to burn or give them away rather than face storage and transportation costs. It became an even bigger problem when the decision was taken last year to halt the wool production process at New Lanark's working mill, which for decades had accepted washed fleeces from small producers and prepared it for spinning. None of which was really in the thoughts of Donna, originally from California, or husband Donald when they took on the challenge of reviving his parents' long since overgrown Sutherland farm. Having inherited the land, they were faced with a patchwork of bog, woodland and arable fields unfarmed for around 30 years. Despite having had little enthusiasm to be a farmer in his youth, Donald and Donna embraced the idea of creating a traditional farm that avoided chemical fertilisers and pesticides, where they could raise Hebridean sheep, Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs, Scots Dumpy chickens, heritage apple orchards and bees. Black cheviot fleece is fed through the restored carding machine at Highland Wools (Image: Highland Wool) But while the hardy Hebridean sheep produced distinctive and high quality double coated fleece, Donna was frustrated by the difficult route required to have it processed. 'Our Hebridean sheep help us manage the land,' she says. 'But having a small flock costs more per animal to sheer. 'We then found out how few consignment mills there are in Scotland – just one of the two mainland mills here could take our fleece.' The couple would have to transport their fleece to the south of England to be processed. But, because they can only produce a relatively small amount each year, they would have to wait around two years to have enough to send. And by then, its quality would have started to deteriorate. The lack of mills to support Scotland's plentiful sheep farmers - particularly those specialising in supporting heritage breeds - confused Donna, who had thought of the country as being a home for quality yarn. 'I started talking to other people and found they had the same issues as we did. 'I was shocked when I looked at the history of how it got to this point," she adds. "It gets my ire up that this is the state of things. 'We had this whole cottage industry, when farming families and neighbours made use of their wool, then the Industrial Revolution happened, machines got bigger, and it got centralised in northern England and not here. 'Mainland Scotland became used to harvesting wool and sending it south. 'When mills there began to close, we had nothing to replace it. 'For Scotland not to have its own mill infrastructure is really hard to believe.' Read more by Sandra Dick: With wool in plentiful supply but gaps in the route to processing it, Donna and Donald decided to take matters into their own hands. 'We started to look at how we could process it ourselves,' she says. That sounds simpler than it was: neither had any experience of wool production, no equipment to do it and just the deep conviction that their plan would work. First, though, they would need small machines just the right size to fit into their farm barn, and most of those were relics from a Victoria era. Their search eventually led to Oban where they found 'Caroline the Carder'. A restoration project halted by illness, it had lain in a barn for 12 years until the couple found it two years ago. Having brought it to Ardgay, they then set about using old manuals and Donald's know-how from working in construction and heavy plant machinery, to bring it back to life. While he used old diagrams to make his own spare parts, Donna rolled up her sleeves, washing her Hebridean fleeces by hand in giant tubs, while swotting up on how to operate the 'new' old machines. Donald Gillies, who inherited his parents' Sutherland farm, has restored the Victorian carding machine (Image: Highland Wool) 'None of us had used them before, but carded fleece has a lot of possibilities: spinners can spin, it can be used for felting, be twisted to be used in peg looms or for stuffing. 'It has taken us a year to learn how to work the picker and the carder, and we've also had to learn how to work with each breed's fleece.' Far from a one size fits all process, different fleeces require different approaches. 'Even within Shetland one fleece might need a different treatment to another," she adds. "Hebridean sheep are double coated in lanolin, they have to be washed differently from a black nose or it would turn into something like cardboard. 'Some farmers might have multiple breeds in a flock. So it's taken a while to learn all of that.' Enthusiasts from around the world visit Shetland Wool Week, due to be held in late September (Image: ALEXA FITZGIBBON - Shetland Amenity Trust) It's also been a race against time: 'The challenge is that so much is vanishing," Donna adds. "We have a shortage of people who know how to work these big machines, but no dearth of spinners and crafters. "Meanwhile, wool is on the up. 'The wool crafting industry in Scotland is full of people who spin and want to work with Scottish wool. 'Once at capacity we hope we can inspire others, that people will hear that this is really possible, that they'll come to see how it works and do it too." It's a message Donna will take to the Scottish Yarn Festival in Perth later this month where she is set to give a talk about how the mill has grown from idea to reality. Having ballooned from a small event of just a handful of exhibitors, the festival now attracts people from around 20 different countries, including some who travel from as far flung as Canada and Taiwan. Read more by Sandra Dick: It is just one of several similar festivals across the country that have also seen rising interest, among them Glasgow School of Yarn, held in October and Scotland's longest running event of its kind, Shetland Wool Week which attracts visitors from around the world, Tangled Galashiels, Woolly Good Gathering in Edinburgh, and Wool at Portsoy which takes place next week. Interest in wool crafts and yarn is expected to rise even higher with a new 'Sewing Bee' style television programme, Game of Wool, fronted by celebrity knitter Tom Daley and featuring Scottish crafts experts Di Gilpin and Sheila Greenwell. Scottish wool craft experts Sheila Greenwell (left) and Di Gilpin of Scottish Yarn Company and Handknitting Design Studio (Image: Contributed) Director of the Scottish Yarn Festival, Eva Christie, says she has seen a rise in the number of small 'homegrown' producers who, instead of sending fleece from their sheep to be buried or burned, are now seeking mills to process it into yarn. 'There is demand from consumers who want to be able to trace their yarn right back to not just the farm but to the individual sheep,' she says. 'But trying to get a mill to process their fleece can mean they have to wait sometimes up to two years. 'People are looking for that connection to land and culture.' The Scottish Yarn Festival is at Perth Concert Hall, August 30 and 31.
Daily Mail
12 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Anthony Albanese's handpicked economic adviser issues an urgent message to Australia about working from home
Anthony Albanese 's productivity adviser has suggested too much working from home is bad for the economy. Productivity Commission chair Danielle Wood, who Labor appointed for a five-year term in 2023, said fully remote work was having a bad effect on economic output for every worker. 'Maybe fully remote work might have some drag on productivity,' she told the National Press Club on Monday. 'You miss out on those gains you get from being face-to-face in the office, training and spillovers. 'Hybrid work two or three days a week in the office, two or three days at home seems to not have a negative impact – in fact it might be slightly positive and it introduces great benefits for workers avoiding the commute, much greater flexibility to manage family and life. 'I've described that as a sweet spot for productivity. The market has naturally found that sweet spot.' Ms Wood said Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan's plan to legislate the right to work from work two days a week therefore was unnecessary. 'The market does have a way of finding that sweet spot so if I was to apply a growth mindset to this, I would think, "What's the problem we're trying to solve here?" It's not clear to me there needs to be a role for government in that,' she said. Ms Wood argued that employers who required all staff to work in the office full-time would struggle to retain employees. 'I speak to employers who say, "I want everyone back full time" and I say, "Yep, you can do that but you will struggle to attract and retain staff." 'You have to pay a wage premium.' Victoria's Labor government has this month announced a plan to enshrine the right to work from home if someone could 'reasonably' WFH in both public and private sector roles. More than a third or 36 per cent of Australians worked from home last year, Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed. WFH became mainstream in 2020 during Covid lockdowns. 'It has been a very substantial shift that we've seen in the post-Covid world,' Ms Wood said. The issue has become so politically charged that former Opposition leader Peter Dutton had to dump an election campaign policy of making Canberra-based public servants return to the office. Victoria's Labor government last week announced a plan to enshrine the right to work from home if someone could 'reasonably' WFH in both public and private sector roles (pictured is Premier Jactina Allan addressing the Labor State Conference in Melbourne) But in a sign of her political independence, Ms Wood also used her National Press Club address on productivity to call on the government to revisit tax breaks for drivers of electric cars. 'It means winding back duplicative and high-cost policies like such as fringe benefit tax concessions for electric vehicles,' she said. During its last term, Labor removed the requirement for employers to pay a fringe benefits tax if they provide an EV to a staff member under the $91,387 luxury car tax threshold for fuel efficient vehicles. Ms Wood is a key participant at this week's Economic Reform Roundtable at Parliament House in Canberra with business and union leaders.
The Courier
21 hours ago
- The Courier
Inside beautiful £2.2 million Perthshire country retreat with tennis court, Pilates studio and separate cottage
A beautiful Perthshire country retreat with a tennis court, a Pilates studio and a separate cottage has come to the market for £2.2 million. Tigh An Tuir, in Strathtay, near Aberfeldy, is an attractive Victorian villa in extensive and well-maintained gardens and grounds. It is mainly built of stone under a pitched slate roof with a turret and traditional sash and case windows. The six-bedroom property has four reception rooms and four bathrooms. Tigh An Tuir is offered for sale as a whole or in two lots. The second lot is the two-bedroom Bridge House, which includes a detached studio. Tigh an Tuir's rooms are well proportioned, light and bright with high ceilings and tall windows complemented by the fine period features throughout. These include polished wooden floors, fine cornicing, panelled doors and a wooden staircase. The reception rooms are reached directly from the staircase hall with its galleried landing. The dining room enjoys a southerly outlook over the garden and continues through to the generous conservatory, which opens out onto a terrace. The sitting room, known by the current owners as The Den, is a reception room centred on an open fire with a mantlepiece. Lying to the north side of the house is the breakfasting kitchen, with a door leading directly outside, with a part-glazed ceiling. A door leads directly off the kitchen, giving access to the office, scullery, laundry room, cloakroom and storage cupboards. The bedrooms all lie on the first floor. The main bedroom has an en-suite bathroom with a freestanding bath in the turret of the property. There are an additional three double bedrooms; one with an en-suite and two with a sink, and a family bathroom. The final two bedrooms, one equipped with an en-suite, can be accessed via secondary staircases at the rear of the property. Tigh an Tuir sits within well-tended gardens and grounds, extending to more than five acres. Wrought iron electric gates give access to the sweeping drive leading to a gravelled parking area to the side of the main house, with further parking to the rear. The gardens and grounds have been well-maintained and developed over many years. Further, there is a tennis court, summerhouse and mature woodland. The Mull Inn lies just to the north of Tigh an Tuir. Formerly a range of outbuildings, it was converted to a detached annexe wing to the principal house. It is of stone construction under a slated roof and includes a games room, bar and dining room. There is also a chef's store, wine cellar, laundry room and garage attached to The Mull Inn. Bridge House is a traditional stone-built cottage south of Tigh an Tuir and adjacent to the public road running through Strathtay. It has been refurbished to form a beautiful house with rooms over two floors. From the entrance vestibule, the hall leads directly to the double-height sitting room with a wood-burning stove and triple aspect. Adjacent is the kitchen, with fitted floor and wall cupboards, integrated appliances and tiled floor. There is a well-proportioned dining room looking out over the garden. A cloakroom completes the accommodation on the ground floor. A staircase leads to the first floor landing with doors leading to the main bedroom, shower room and dressing room, which could also be a second bedroom. There is additionally a detached studio to the west of Bridge House, which currently provides a well-equipped, bright and airy fitness/pilates studio. This could alternatively be used as an annexe or home working office. It has an outdoor patio overlooking a pretty garden. Adjacent to the studio is a traditional stone-built outbuilding. Bridge House has a one-acre lawned garden to the front, with a courtyard to the rear. Tigh An Tuir and all its buildings are being marketed by Galbraith as a whole lot for £2.2m. The two main houses are also available as separate lots; however, Bridge House is not available for purchase on its own until Tigh An Tuir has been sold. Elsewhere, £500,000 has been slashed from the asking price of a Highland Perthshire home won in an online Omaze draw.
