IT was with a tinge of pride that I read your article on the 30th anniversary of the Glasgow Garden Festival ("A magical Glasgow summer", Herald Magazine, April 14). It certainly brought back all the happy memories of that event.
The story, however, goes back to the late 1970s when the Scottish Development Agency (SDA) was contemplating a new exhibition and conference centre for Glasgow. In early 1980, I well remember walking around the very derelict Queens Dock – partially filled in with the rubble from the demolished Gorbals tenements – when we were discussing the size and shape of such a building and how it might sit on the site. Much of the discussion was the regenerative effect that it might have to this wasteland area. Princes Dock, across the river, was all but derelict too.
Move forward to 1983 when the SECC (now in its 35th anniversary year) was opened as "the Big Red Shed” and a new hotel was being built beside it. This, together with the vast amount of parking available on the site, played a major role in attracting the Garden Festival to the city. Only one problem, the River Clyde ran between the two areas. Answer, Bell's Bridge.
As design co-ordinator for the SDA for both projects, I was able to put several elements of the festival out to design competition, including Bell's Bridge, the High Street, the children's play area and several other elements of the festival. This whole period was a great experience of public and private sectors working closely together with a common aim. As a private citizen I used my season ticket almost 40 times and got as much enjoyment from the festival as anyone else.
The downside, as was referred to in your article, was our inability to retain more of the site for permanent use. We knew this at the start of the process, as the whole ethos of the British Garden Festival movement was ultimately to provide sites for economic and environmental development. We were only allowed to keep up to 15 per cent of the area, to be used for the benefit of the local people, hence Festival Park. I, personally, had a dream that we could keep the area commonly known as "the Panhandle" where the trams ran and the Coca-Cola ride was, and move the Clydesdale Bank Tower there. This would have created a mini Tivoli Gardens for Glasgow. Not allowed.
Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, when I spent a night at a hotel close to the "Squinty Bridge" and toured both the old Queens and Princes Dock sites. It may have taken all of 30 years to reach this stage but our original objectives for both of these derelict docks is being well and truly achieved.
The Garden Festival site is now, among other things, a media hub, with BBC, STV and even, possibly, Channel 4, the site of Glasgow Science Centre, a couple of hotels and some housing. Our dreams of 1980 are truly taking place. To my knowledge none of the other Garden Festival sites have achieved anything like Glasgow in terms of urban and economic regeneration.
I have one, very tiny, regret. I miss the Big Red Shed. I am delighted, however, to see Queen Mary II back on the Clyde.
David Mann,
21 Carr Crescent, Crail, Fife
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