Former hotel overlooking Glasgow Green could lose its historic façade

An iconic Glasgow hotel could lose most of its front facing facade overlooking Glasgow Green after planners renege on promises to retain the front of the building, citing safety reasons.

Planners are being asked to agree that the facade of a derelict B-listed former hotel overlooking Glasgow Green can’t be saved because of safety reasons.

LAR Housing Trust - the owners of the building - were previously granted permission from Glasgow City Council to demolish the derelict listed building at 25 Greenhead Street to build 45 new flats just before Christmas last year.

The building used to be the ‘Inn on the Green’ hotel but it has lay empty since 2006 and was badly damaged by a fire in 2014.

The former hotel now sits on the Buildings at Risk register.

The developer hoped to see the historic building’s facade (front face) retained, while a total of 45 flats were to be built over the rest of the demolished building.

Thirty seven of the new flats will be two-bed and eight will be one-bed, with 75 per cent of the flats dual-aspect.

The historic sand-stone front of the building - and that of an adjoining single-storey structure - was to be kept with the remainder of the development being new-build. The fire at the property in 2014 had completely destroyed the roof.

LAR Housing Trust is now asking for permission to demolish the upper levels of the facade, with just the ground floor frontage retained - citing it as necessary on safety grounds.

A report submitted with the revised plan states: “We are proposing the reduction in the scope of the work to the facade retention giving due regard to the very poor and unsafe condition of the building superstructure generally.

“Whilst our engineers have confirmed that it is technically feasible to retain the front elevation, they concur with our comments that from a safety perspective we cannot guarantee how the rest of the building will perform with the disturbance during the installation of the internal FRS (facade retention scheme) support elements along with the divorce demolition thereafter at the rear of the front elevation.”

The application is currently awaiting assessment by council officials.