People Make Glasgow building to undergo £30m refurbishment, new owners announce

Bruntwood SciTech, a science and tech specialist property provider, has purchased Glasgow’s Met Tower - better known as the People Make Glasgow building - for £16.2m.

The business has now announced a £30m transformation programme for the 14-storey office building in the heart of the city centre, which has been vacant since 2014.

The aim is for it to become a new hub for tech and digital businesses.

Glasgow joins Bruntwood SciTech’s network of innovation districts, which now spans 7 locations and 11 campuses in Birmingham, Cambridge, Cheshire, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool and Oxford. Their campuses include Alderley Park, Innovation Birmingham, Manchester Science Park, ID Manchester, Platform in Leeds and Melbourn Science Park.

Its plans for the Grade-B listed, old City of Glasgow College building, will transform it into a hub where university spinouts, startups, scaleups, and large leading tech businesses can co-locate together and benefit from being in an innovative, collaborative tech cluster. It is intended that Met Tower be net zero in operation following a transformation project that will retain as much of its existing fabric as possible, significantly reducing the embedded carbon impact of the re-development.

Businesses based at Met Tower will be able to access Bruntwood SciTech’s UK-wide network of innovation districts, allowing them to collaborate with a 500-strong specialist community of tech and science businesses, and will be provided with their specialist Innovation Services support which includes access to highly skilled STEM talent, new markets, funding and finance support and professional services advice.

Offering 113,000 sq ft of coworking, serviced and leased office space, Bruntwood SciTech will also be creating a shared breakout space on the ground floor, showers, lockers, secure cycle store and sports kit drying room, as well as a rooftop lounge to be used by its future community. It will also offer a cafe and other food & beverage amenities.

Work is expected to start later this year, subject to planning, and complete in 2024.

Kate Lawlor, chief executive of Bruntwood SciTech, said: “Glasgow has one of Europe’s most exciting, diverse tech and digital clusters with exceptional higher education institutions and clinical assets. Met Tower is in a brilliant location for these types of businesses and is perfectly placed to help create a hub in which they can scale, co-innovate and thrive.

“Glasgow’s science and tech sector is rapidly growing, having seen some of the highest growth in the whole of the UK in the past two years, and now makes up 28% of all jobs in the city. As a result it has retained its position in the top three leading tech cities in the UK outside of London. Our investment in Glasgow is for the long term, and as we’ve demonstrated in our other cities, we are committed to becoming embedded and driving forwards the growth of the knowledge economy and economic impact of the sector both in Glasgow and other parts of Scotland. This is our first in hopefully several brilliant projects in the country.”

As the Met Tower project develops, Bruntwood SciTech will be looking to recruit a locally based team in Glasgow.