DEVELOPERS have lodged £20million plans for a 'car free' residential development in a conservation area of Glasgow city centre.
The B-listed building at 520 Sauchiehall Street which extends to Renfrew Street, has been derelict for a number of years and housed cinemas from 1912 to 1984.
If plans are approved, the site will be re-developed into a 12-storey tower with 87 studio and one bedroom apartments and a roof terrace.
The developers say the "zero parking" provision will be supplemented with cycle storage lockers for each property, additional racks and funding for a car club vehicle.
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Those behind the environmentally friendly project say it will also help support the Sauchiehall Street Avenues Project, which has transformed the area as an active travel route and aims to encourage more residential development in the city centre.
The council has said it wants to build homes for an additional 25,000 residents.
A completion date has been set for June 2022, although this could be delayed by the pandemic and it is anticipated that the construction alone will create hundreds of trade jobs.
The proposal has been submitted by Iceni Projects Limited on behalf of Consensus Capital Group Ltd which has consulted a specialist heritage consultant, to explore the possible retention of the original façades at 520 Sauchiehall Street and 341 Renfrew Street.
The listed building was extensively altered internally when it became the Vitagraph cinema in 1912.
It was renamed the King’s Cinema in 1914 and by 1954 the cinema was known as the Newscine and was dedicated to showing newsreels.
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It was later re-named as the Curzon and then the Classic in the 1960s, finally becoming the Tatler Cinema Club’ until 1984, when the building then becoming a bar and club venue.
The building has been on the Buildings at Risk register since June 2014 and has been vacant for at least 10 years.
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In July 2019, the bust of Beethoven which was part of the Renfrew Street elevation was vandalised and the head removed.
The cleared part of the site at No.522 was previously a bank and is now demolished and derelict.
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