Trongate 103: Glasgow City Council must show "leadership" as cultural spaces under pressure

It comes as Trongate 103 tenant GMAC said that it was facing an “ultimatum” during rent negotiations with City Property - the arms length external organisation which runs Glasgow City Council’s commercial property portfolio. Mr Sweeney, MSP for Glasgow, said that organisations such as GMAC cannot be expected to pay commercial rates and that it is “completely self-defeating and stupid to put them in this position.”

The city centre venue is home to organisations including Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre, Glasgow Print Studio and StreetLevel Photoworks.

Mr Sweeney continued: “It needs to be operated on a non-commercial basis. And that's essentially what the CCA was. The building has always been owned by Creative Scotland. Similarly, in Glasgow's case, this building, Trongate 103, should be transferred from City Property into Glasgow Life and operated on a different basis to their commercial assets. It should be managed as a cultural asset and an annex of the Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art, in my view.”

Speaking to GlasgowWorld yesterday (3 March), GMAC chairperson Mark Langdon said that tenants such as those at Trongate 103 “are not just another tenant”. He added: “We're not a commercial tenant, we are a partner within a cultural organisation. And that needs to be reflected in what we're charged and how we're treated.”

City Property responded to the claims that it was forcing organisations out of the Merchant City building by saying that the process it was undertaking was “common practice” in the property market and that the old leases must be ended to allow the new agreements to take effect.

A spokesperson for City Property Glasgow (Investments) LLP said: “Lease renewals are a standard process for all tenants given that existing leases expire and the market rent of properties change over time, which is reflected in any new lease agreement. Lease renewal negotiations for 103 Trongate have been ongoing for some time and we advised our tenants that the serving of a notice to vacate would be necessary to enable the old leases to end and the new lease agreements to take effect. This is common practice across the property market”

However, Mr Sweeney said that the building should not be considered a commercial property, and that there is a risk that it joins the growing list of cultural spaces that have closed in the city.

He said: “The city needs to take leadership. It’s no good simply saying this is an operational matter for a Glasgow City property. We need leadership from the city leader, Susan Aitken, to step up and make this happen. We've seen that happen before with regards to, say, for example, the end of the Lighthouse as Glasgow Centre for Architecture and Design. It's going to be a building that's now essentially used for private commercial activity. And we've also seen the loss of McLellan Galleries. We've seen the loss of the CCA. We've seen the loss of other workspaces in the city that have been used by artists and creatives, particularly in the Calton area. We're seeing the potential threat to Exit Nightclub in Maxwell Street with a proposed development there, which has now just gone in for appeal after being rejected initially.”

Mr Sweeney called Trongate 103 a “massive intangible asset” to Glasgow and called any move that would not secure art organisations in the city like it “extremely self-destructive”.

He added: “We are seeing a slow motion cultural collapse, no clear strategy on a night time economy or what the ingredients are to make a culturally rich ecosystem in Glasgow thrive. It feels like the city has lurched into a very rent seeking, commercially hard-nosed approach to development, which I think in itself is poor.”