This time last week I was standing in the staggering volume of the interior of a disused power station, on the other side of the Atlantic. The Hearn Generating Station, in the docklands of Toronto, is a massive beast of a building.

Three times the size of the Tate Modern, abandoned for 30 years, with a vertiginous smoke stack that seems as high as a Corbett, it was reverberating to the colossal sound of R Murray Schafer's Apocalypsis, a serrated sheet of sound echoing through the mainly dilapidated building. Apocalypsis is one of the commissions for the annual Luminato festival in the city, which this year has, under the aegis of departing director, the ebullient Jörn Weisbrodt, moved in its entirety into the building.

Weisbrodt showed me around the site – there is a pop up restaurant in the old control room, a very long exhibition space above the old turbine spaces, a 4,000-capacity music area, a vault in which the biggest glitter ball in the western world sprays splinters of light far and wide.

As I watched the National Theatre of Scotland's James Plays running through their technical rehearsal in another corner of the vast space (a wee nook with a 1,200 seating capacity), I did think: wouldn't it be great if Scotland had such a vast space as this, to stage shows, visual arts events, music both orchestral and modern? But then, as we were reminded this week, it does: not an old power station but a civic amenity, not the Turbine Hall, but the Kelvin Hall, in the west end of Glasgow.

This week, Glasgow councillors gave the green light for a refurbishment of the building's roof. This may seen mundane (if any £8 million job can be mundane) but it is a key step in the transformation of the building and a key stage in its second phase of redevelopment. Although it will re-open this summer, and show off its new collaborations with The National Library of Scotland, as home for the Moving Image Archive, and Glasgow University's Hunterian store, as well as a huge gym, the second phase is more exciting.

It is here that Glasgow plan a series of collaborations that could make it one of the key cultural sites in Scotland, if not the UK (if there is one by the time the plan is completed). Given this week's vote, it is perhaps fortunate Glasgow Life are not relying on any EU money for the transformation. Instead the space will be populated by a series of large-scale collaborations.

Major contemporary art galleries will be formed with a new enhanced partnership with the National Galleries of Scotland. They are discussing ideas such as Artist Rooms being housed in Kelvin Hall, and some long-term loans of some of its treasures. The exact details are yet to be hammered out but the discussions are ongoing. Along with the potential move of the entire Hunterian Museum and Gallery to the site, Glasgow would have a world-class cultural exhibition site. To make the full plan happen, there will need, I am told, to be support from the Scottish Government, and, if it is still involved in Scotland, the UK Government. It remains a fascinating project in a unique space.