by Janice McKenzie
Trafalgar House Developments have reached an agreement with Queen’s Park Football Club for the purchase of the 33-acre Lesser Hampden site at Glasgow’s world-famous Hampden Park football ground. The price to be paid by THD is thought to be around £10m.
Lesser Hampden is currently used as a training pitch. Trafalgar House are planning an 80,000-sq ft supermarket and 40 shops in a covered mall on the site. An outline planning application for the £20m scheme has been lodged with Glasgow DC.
The main entrance to the new shopping centre would be next to Mount Florida Parish Church and the scheme would link up to the existing shopping in Cathcart Road. The stadium has 1,150 parking spaces, which lie empty most of the time, and these would be used to complement the shopping, except for major matches when shops would close, thus releasing the parking.
The project also includes a “Hall of Fame”, which would be the first public museum of football in the country.
Money raised by the sale would enable Queen’s Park to rebuild the existing stadium. It is possible that the plans will be called in by Strathclyde Regional Council and final approval could come in six months.
Lambert Smith & Partners, in their March Glasgow office report, say that a total of 84,799 sq ft has been let in 1986’s first quarter. The space is in six units and does not include the Westergate letting to British Telecom.
This figure is a decrease on the previous quarter of 25.61% and an increase on the same quarter of 1984 of 160.42%.
LS&P’s availability projection for early next year is gloomy in the extreme. The firm calculate that there will be only 29,500 sq ft on the market at that time, and in one unit.
