HIGH Street giant Marks & Spencer has chosen Glasgow for its biggest store in Europe.
A #25m extension to Scotland's flagship M&S Argyle Street shop will create 250 new jobs.
The new-look superstore will embrace the existing building and a new block across the road in Virginia Street which will house the offices and stores.
The buildings will be linked by an underground tunnel which will allow goods and staff to flow freely between the two operations.
All the existing space at the Argyle Street store will be devoted to sales and services.
Under the plan, the Argyle Street store would be enlarged from 95,000 square feet to 140,000 sq ft.
Argyle Street will have many new services, including:
q a coffee shop
q counter food service to include a bakery, delicatessen, and fish shop
q new home furnishings department
q improved customer services.
The move was made possible because the company already owns a massive site opposite the Argyle Street store in Virginia Street and did not have to snap up surrounding properties in order to complete the job.
A final decision will be made by Glasgow City Council's planning chiefs next month.
The developments in Glasgow city centre and at Braehead, just off the M8 halfway between Glasgow and Paisley, will bring Marks & Spencer's investment to over #50m in and around the city of Glasgow.
Apart from the Argyle Street expansion the company is building a brand-new Marks & Spencer store - similar to the one at the Gyle Shopping Centre on the outskirts of Edinburgh - at Braehead where it will share the limelight with Save-a-Centre store.
Marks & Spencer is also opening three new stores in Princes Street, Edinburgh, to replace the Littlewoods shops. But all three put together will still be smaller than the proposed Argyle Street complex.
The company is also planning to replace the Manchester store which was blasted by IRA terrorists four years ago.
Since the bombing, M&S has used its ingenuity to continue trading by leasing three floors of Lewis's and also using other rented town centre premises.
The new Manchester superstore comes about after a personal pledge from the M&S chairman who promised that a new store would rise out of the ashes of the old one.
Marks & Spencer officials are confident that they can overcome a few minor hitches - not unexpected with a project of this size - and that the Glasgow extension will go ahead to completion next year, making it the biggest in Europe.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article