City Centre Shopping Malls

[RapidAssistant]

We have heard a lot of mutterings in the Glasgow media over the last few years on the long term fate of both the St Enoch Centre and the Buchanan Galleries, with talk that both will eventually disappear or be remodelled substantially.

I'm just back from visiting friends in the USA and I was taken to a couple of "ghost malls" where the anchor tenant either moved out or went bust and has eventually taken the whole place down with it. Certainly we have seen the start of this phenomenon at St Enoch, with the demise of both BHS and then Debenhams which has led to the eastern end of the mall look decidedly patchy and empty, and the recent attempt to revive it by putting a cinema in the old BHS store. It makes the decision all those years ago to close the ice rink seem a rather short sighted one, when they felt you needed more than just retail to draw the punters in.

The Galleries does look a lot healthier in comparison, but again - it really relies on John Lewis being there, and they have had their well publicised troubles too , and to be honest - given they now rely on Waitrose for most of their profits yet the scheme to build one into the Glasgow JL store seem to have hit the buffers. Doesn't look at all good.

Hats off to the developers working in collaboration with GCC to look at the long term prospects of these complexes and how to redevelop them in a post-retail future (the problem is global, and isn't going to go away) - with a greater emphasis on residential and leisure. What's everyone's opinion on this?