Bulldozers have moved in on a notorious Glasgow hotel that once housed homeless residents living in horrific conditions.
Work is ongoing to partially demolish the Bellgrove Hotel with housing chiefs set to take it over to turn the land into new accommodation.
Glasgow City Council bosses previously confirmed the disposal of the land in the city’s Gallowgate to Wheatley Homes Glasgow to allow for the regeneration of the area.
It comes after a campaign fiercely fought to close the hotel amid allegations that homeless people were living in ‘stinking pools of vomit and urine on the floor’.
The homeless hostel was compared to “a Soviet gulag” and Dickensian poorhouses when it was raised in the Scottish Parliament, after a 2014 Daily Record investigation found occupants were housed in tiny rooms looking onto a rat-infested courtyard.
It was also reported the hostel’s owners raked in £1.5m in annual fees from taxpayers. Following the investigation, Glasgow MSP John Mason raised a motion signed by 21 members from across the political divide calling for better regulation of the hostel “as a matter of urgency”.
Wheatley Group plans to redevelop the hotel and surrounding land to provide 70 homes. The project will see part of the hotel knocked down as the “western wing is too narrow to accommodate flats”.
Flats would be available for “mid-market rent” — generally higher than social housing but lower than private rents. Wheatley Homes’ website states mid-market properties “offer alternative affordable housing for customers who work and who earn between £21,000 and £40,000”.
The hotel redevelopment is part of wider plans for the regeneration of the Gallowgate area and includes brownfield land to the east.
The B-listed hotel had originally been built in the 1930s to provide accommodation for working men.
Don’t miss the latest news from around Scotland and beyond. Sign up to our daily newsletter.