Glasgow set to lose out on Selfridges' luxury store

The Sunday Herald can reveal Selfridges, second only to Harrods in the pecking order of London shopping aristocracy, is close to reaching a deal with property fund manager Frogmore to sell the mainly derelict site in the Merchant City where it planned to set up shop.

The price is reputed to be in the region of £5m. The deal will be a major embarrassment to Selfridges, which is thought to have spent more than £15m on its holding.

Frogmore has owned several buildings in the same three-acre block for a number of years. It is said to want to build flats, a four-star hotel and shopping units and is believed to have reached an informal agreement over the scheme with city planning officials, who have been under pressure from residents and businesses to do something about the site of the former Goldbergs department store for some time. Since Goldbergs's successor Weisfelds went out of business in 1999, it has been largely unoccupied.

If the deal is completed as expected in the next few weeks, there will be bittersweet feelings among city officials. They would have loved a Selfridges to help regenerate a run-down part of the city centre, and would see it as a response to the Harvey Nichols store that opened in Edinburgh in 2002.

It was that year that Selfridges bought the Glasgow site, which overlooks Argyle Street, one of the city's main shopping streets, to the south. The retailer talked about opening a 200,000sqft store at a cost of £90m, creating 1000 jobs in the process.

The plan to add a Glasgow store to outlets in Birmingham and Manchester was thrown into uncertainty the following year after the company was taken over by Canadian conglomerate, George Weston.

Selfridges's interest in the city waxed and waned into the middle of the decade until it was finally confirmed in 2010 that it had no immediate plans to open in Glasgow, instead submitting a planning application centred around building a car park. At that time it stressed its long-term commitment to the city but said it made no sense to build a store in the current economic climate.

The council, which has substantial car-parking interests of its own through its ownership of arms-length company City Parking (Glasgow), never approved the application. Various property sources say that this plan appeared dead in the water several years ago, amid a general view that the location was wrong for the retailer now that the centre of shopping gravity was increasingly fixed around Buchanan Street.

There have since been a number of approaches from different suitors. One developer with mainly residential plans was in contact with Selfridges as recently as last month to offer somewhere short of £5m, but was told that the company was not interested in selling. The agents took that to mean that the price was wrong rather than that Selfridges wouldn't sell.

In fact, Selfridges is understood to have been in talks with Frogmore for around 18 months.

Sources familiar with the situation believe that the two sides have agreed a price and that only a few legal details remain to be ironed out. They said they would be "very surprised" if a final agreement was not reached shortly.

Selfridges is looking to expand its London store and is seen as much more likely to open a store in a major international city than any other outlets in the UK.

A Merchant City resident who preferred to remain anonymous added: "This site has blighted the area for 10 years and is needed to be built on as soon as possible. We would welcome any improvements."

A spokesman for Glasgow City Council said: "Any planning application on this site will be considered in due course by the council's planning application committee."

Selfridges and Frogmore declined to respond.