GLASGOW University has lodged an outline planning application for the former Western Infirmary site as part of a planned £1billion investment in its West End campus.

The application proposes a wide number of uses including teaching and research buildings, shops, restaurants, bars, cafes, hotels, sport and recreation facilities, a day nursery and crèche and residential or student flats.

It is estimated the work, one of the biggest education projects in Scotland, will create around 2500 jobs during the construction phase.

Work on dismantling the former hospital will start this summer with the insides of existing buildings being stripped back. Demolition is unlikely to start until later this year.

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Five listed buildings will be refurbished including the chapel, the outpatients building, the Macgregor building, the Tennent Institute and the Anderson College.

A further five new buildings will be erected to house a research and innovation hub, an institute of health and wellbeing, a social justice hub, the College of Arts, the College of Science and Engineering and a centre for chronic disease.

Professor Anton Muscatelli, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the university, said: “We hope to use the new site as a catalyst to attract and grow the very best students and to ensure Glasgow continues to be one of the top universities in the world.

The Herald:

“The first major development will be a learning and teaching hub, situated not on the former Western Infirmary site but on University Avenue.

It will provide spaces for 3000 students at any one time as well as state-of-the-art facilities and will allow us to use the latest techniques.”

Read more: Plans for £1bn expansion of Glasgow University revealed

The university moved from High Street to the Gilmorehill site in 1870. It was originally supposed to be built on the site of Kelvingrove Art Gallery which was owned by the university but the town council swapped it for land it owned at the hospital site.

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