Recently in Glasgow Category

 

Regional rents may be over the worst. Jones Lang LaSalle has issued what at first looks like an up-beat release for developers desperate to get cracking on those building plans (read the full report here). But read on, the agency goes on to say that it's a shortage of supply and definitely not a growth in demand that's pushing up those rents.

Look at its office clock and that bottom left quadrant, which shows rents accelerating is sadly and totally empty. From a regional point of view only a handful are inching past the 4pm rents bottoming out mark.

Edinburgh and Leeds started to fall later so are behind the cycle and only just beginning to catch up now, says JLL. Birmingham fell first so is already past the worst.

It is probably the most highly anticipated addition to Glasgow's retail offer since John Lewis opened in Buchanan Galleries 10 years ago but yesterday the Scottish city got its very own Hamleys.

This will be the only opening for the toy store this year, and for one day Glasgow's shoppers could be forgiven for thinking they'd been transported back into a childhood fantasy with human size teddy bears and a snow queen welcoming the first visitors.

The 30,000 sq ft store marks the first phase of opening at Ivanhoe Cambridge's £100m refurbished and expanded St Enoch Centre in the city centre.

Just a few weeks ago on a tour around the centre the Hamleys store was being fitted out behind closed doors while the rest of the centre was in various stages of make over from exposed steel and cables to decorators. But from the opening day pictures below, it looks like the Snow Queen has been performing a little magic and long may it continue.  

Other new names that will be joining Hamleys in the centre include accessories specialist Folli Follie and fashion brands Henleys and Pulp. The rest of St Enoch's, which is 80% let by floorspace, will open in phases between now and Summer 2010.

And so December is approaching and the Focus roadshow is coming to end for another year but, before we depart for our Christmas holidays, we like to get the crystal ball out and have a look at what is coming up in the year ahead. (It can't be worse than this year, can it?)

As we will be entering a new decade, we want to look at how the last 10 years has shaped the market in 10 cities around the UK and how that might influence the market.

Dan and Mel have divided up the country between them and are looking at five cities each. Do get in touch with them for more detail about the information and type of  comment they are after.

The 2010 Preview will be published on December 12 and please contact the writers by Monday 23 November.

London, Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester & Newcastle:

Daniel Cunningham, senior writer 020 7911 1822, daniel.cunningham@rbi.co.uk

Cardiff, Birmingham, Leeds, Edinburgh, Glasgow:
Melanie Smith, Focus editorial assistant, 020 7911 1916, melanie.smith@rbi.co.uk

Picture by Francesca Rose on Flickr and used under creative commons

Ivanhoe Cambridge was the envy of many a shopping centre developer in May when it landed Hamleys for a 30,000 sq ft unit in the extension to its St Enoch shopping centre in Glasgow.

While in the city for our annual Glasgow Focus reception I met up with Ivanhoe's Richard Kingston who took me on a grand tour of the centre to see how work is progressing.

Many of the existing retailers have stayed open during the works but of the new space, it was only Hamley's that looked like it was well on the road to finishing its fit out.

Opening of the 250,000 sq ft of new space will be phased with the first tranche of retailers launching next month in time for the lucrative Christmas trading period. For more info see our Glasgow Focus published on November 22.

Click on continue reading to see the pictures I took. Hamleys' unit is easily spotted by it's red colour-scheme. Looks like there still a lot of work to be done elsewhere though.

The Focus reception roadshow rounded off its year of travelling around the UK in Glasgow yesterday.

As the sun went down on what locals said was the first nice day since the end of July, Glasgow's property great and good gathered at the Supper Room in Private Members club 29 Exchange Square.

The beer and wine flowed and by the end of the evening there was even talk of property job swaps (a developer stepping into his agents shoes and vice versa ). Hold that thought there might be a feature in that...

Our snapper snapped away and you can all the pictures in the slideshow above. Melanie Smith also recorded a podcast on the night speaking to guest about the economy and redundancies. Click on continue reading for the link.

And if you couldn't make the event there's still a chance to get involved with our Glasgow Focus. Click on the continue reading link below to view our synopsis which has all the details of the features and who's writing them.

Picture by Alan Donaldson

At the start of the year everyone could be forgiven for being more than a little concerned about job security. And certainly that was the message coming out of our sentiment survey of Edinburgh and Glasgow property professionals conducted in Q1 and Q2.

Nearly a quarter of those questioned thought there would be more large scale redundancies to come, while the majority of the remainder felt there would be some more job losses but the worst was over.

Fast forward to our summer survey and has a brief spell of fine weather and the odd rumour of an end to recession changed anything? Well the numbers predicting large scale redundancies has definitely been kicked into touch down from 26.2% to 5.6% in Edinburgh and 18.8% to 7.7% in Glasgow.

The majority still believe there are some small scale job cuts to come. And, while it is probably best described as less negative rather than a positive, an increasing number believe there won't be any further sackings now compared to the start of the year.

No one quite dares to hope there will be any recruitment though. So the barometer it seems is slowly edging away from 'stormy' to 'rain'. (Reminds me a bit of the weather on childhood holidays in the Highlands.)

For more on how Scotland's property professionals are feeling about the economy and the market in general, see this week's EG. In it you will also find features on how Edinburgh and Glasgow's historic dependence on financial services to occupy new development is coming back to haunt them and how having a devolved government is helping, or not as the case may be, to protect the Scottish economy.

There is also a piece by our Midlands editor and former EG Scotland news hound Lisa Pilkington on how the future of two key schemes in the Scottish capital hangs in the balance. It seems that it is not only the recession that is biting developers...

Picture by Spixey on Flickr and used under creative commons
 

Sentiment is so important in the property industry and since the start of the year we have been tracking how people in key markets around the country feel about their industry and its prospects for the coming months.

We are in the process of doing the second surveys for Scotland (Edinburgh and Glasgow), Bristol and the East of England to see if the mood has changed.

But we can't do that unless lots of people fill out our quick online survey. It's totally anonymous and we'll be publishing the full results online as well analysing them in the magazine.

So if you work in property in:
Scotland click here
Bristol click here
East of England click here

The publication dates for the features are 29 August for Scotland and 5 September for Bristol and the East of England.

Picture by yourdon on Flickr and used under creative commons

And I like this one purely because it includes the phrase "body-piercing brother Roy" and comes with this marvellously unproperty-like image of Roy and his brother Stuart, a tattoo artist who is the real subject of the press release.

Indeed King Sturge, who issued it, tells us that Stuart trained in Las Vegas leading to the snappy headline "From Las Vegas to Glas Vegas".

After that the fact that it is about a 931 sq ft letting in the Merchant Building in Glasgow is, well, incidental (but if you are interested Stuart signed a 15-year-lease on an annual rent of £15,000 for his new tattoo parlour).