Glasgow City Council has today (22 April) accepted £437,500 in developer contribution funding for the Holland Street Avenue, part of the £115million Avenues programme being delivered through Glasgow city centre.
This funding will improve this Avenue by introducing active travel infrastructure that links with other parts of the cycling network. The funding will see £350,000 made available for capital work, with the remaining £87,500 to support maintenance over a 10-year period.
The Holland St Avenue will include an avenue of trees along the western footway of Holland Street and wider footways throughout to create a more attractive environment for pedestrians, residents and visitors. On-street parking will be included, meeting the demand identified through parking surveys. Soft landscaping will be included, incorporating drainage and creating raingardens which will slow the flow of surface water in to the combined sewer networks.
The developer contributions were made through the ENV2 policy of allocating such funds to public realm works, and come from private developments at York Street / James Watt Street and Robertson Street / York Street. An equivalent value already allocated to this Avenue by the Glasgow City Region City Deal will now be allocated to a two-way segregated cycleway on Pitt Street which will provide a north-south cycle connection to Waterloo Street, increasing the quality of that project.
Work on the Holland Street Avenue will begin in the Autumn of 2022, and is expected to be complete by early Summer in 2024. The design process for the project is ongoing.
This is an area of the city centre undergoing significant change, with the demolition of the former Strathclyde Police headquarters building at Pitt Street, and the site now being redeveloped for a landmark housing and retail development, and developers are finalising a long-term lease of the former High School site with a view to converting the buildings there to a hotel and events space. The Avenues team engaged with the developers of these schemes to ensure the Holland Street Avenue will also bring the best possible benefits for these projects and the people who will live, work and visit there.
More information on the Avenues programme – the biggest of its kind in the UK – is available at: https://www.glasgowcitycentrestrategy.com/project/city-centre-avenues. The Avenues will be a network of new, attractive, accessible, safe, sustainable and easily-maintained routes throughout the city centre that are people-focused, encourage active travel and are more attractive to residents, workers, visitors and investors.
The £115million Avenues programme in Glasgow city centre is a Glasgow City Region City Deal project, funded by the Scottish and UK Governments. The Glasgow City Region City Deal will see both governments provide £500million of funding for infrastructure projects.