Glasgow City Council receives plan to turn former C&A building into 144-bedroom hotel

The former C&A building on Sauchiehall Street could be turned into a “boutique” hotel under a new plan.

Glasgow City Council has received an application to convert the Art Deco property, which was most recently home to Irish retail chain Dunnes Stores.

A three-storey rooftop extension is proposed to create a 144-bedroom hotel with a “destination restaurant and bar” and roof terrace.

Constructed in 1929, the building, at the junction of Sauchiehall Street and Cambridge Street, has been empty since Dunnes shut in 2017.

Plans state that since that closure there is “visible evidence of prolonged disuse, including localised deterioration, vegetation growth and weathering”.

The existing building would be retained and refurbished as part of the project, with the extension allowing for another two floors of hotel accommodation.

The main entrance to the hotel would be on Cambridge Street while the restaurant would “occupy the prominent Sauchiehall Street corner”.

According to the plans, the restaurant and bar are “intended to operate as a destination in its own right as well as serving hotel guests, introducing a new publicly accessible hospitality use and supporting additional footfall and evening activity on Sauchiehall Street”.

Two companies — One Cambridge Developments and Willstone Ventures Ltd — are named as the applicant in planning documents. Harinder Bassi is named as the director of both firms on Companies House.

A public consultation event on the proposed reuse of the building was held in June. Previous plans to create a 112-bed hotel on the site were withdrawn in 2020.