WHEN the Admiral Bar on Glasgow’s Waterloo Street announced suddenly last week that it was closing, the outpouring of grief was akin to a death in the family.

Siobhan Ross, manager here for more than a decade, tells me it was “insane”. Every news outlet in Scotland carried the story and it began trending across all social media platforms. Friends and customers of the Admiral, though, may not have long to wait before they can visit another premises bearing its name.

Dave Ross, who has owned the Admiral in partnership with two friends for 17 years, has already targeted another city centre venue currently in darkness.

“I’m hoping to have the place up and running within a couple of weeks after we depart Waterloo Street,” he said. It’s already quite a well-known location but I think we can fit the Admiral’s name in there in some shape or form.”

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Like many other Glaswegians who have found solace in its well-curated gantry, the Admiral Bar commands a prominent place in the knobbly tapestry of my newspaper career. It was in this place, in October 1983, that I had my first drinking session as a professional journalist.

I’d just met my new colleagues at the old Scottish Catholic Observer newspaper which occupied premises further back along Waterloo Street. The then editor, Jim Coffey, told me that my first day – a Friday – had coincided with the week’s most serious undertaking: the Friday afternoon swally. We would later be joined by Monsignor Tom Connelly, the Catholic Church’s gregarious communications chief.

The bar was pleasingly dark and you gained ingress through a door on the left, set back a few feet from the street. And then down a couple of steps to a black and white tiled floor to a wooden table facing the bar.

This was a pub for grown-ups and you were expected to drink like a grown-up in Glasgow: keeping your voice low; avoiding eye contact with strangers and generally being circumspect and deferential to the staff. The Admiral was unpretentious, yet louche and you could imagine a tense exchange unfolding here in gangster films.

The Admiral had been a kenspeckle Glasgow destination for a couple of decades before I darkened its doors. Billy Connolly played there with his band, the Humblebums, and you’d occasionally see Tommy Gemmell, Celtic’s great Lisbon Lion having a drink with Willie Henderson, his famous Rangers rival and friend.

Later visits were dispiriting occasions, though, as the Admiral began to decline in appearance. It wasn’t looking after itself and needed someone to love it. This is when Dave Ross and his partners, Marc Ferrier and Simon Small moved in and began to oversee something of a rebirth. Ross had been a well-known DJ in Glasgow’s club scene and was well-connected to the city’s thrumming music scene as a promoter and events organiser.

Within a few years he’d used his connections to turn the Admiral into one of Glasgow’s most innovative and popular small music venues. Last week, though, after 17 years of unbroken success and with the bar in very rude health, he was forced to give notice of its closure.

“After 60 years, 17 in our hands, The Admiral will call last orders after Saturday, March 11, due to site redevelopment. We thank you, the public, the promoters, the event organisers, and most importantly our magnificent staff for all your support through these years.

“The Admiral has been a community in the city centre. Details of our closing week parties and future plans to follow. I had hoped to have more time to contact a number of friends and DJs directly, and to be able to confirm future plans, it appears someone jumped the gun with their presser.

“Closing a business is one thing, closing a successful, solvent and iconic institution has been another.” His statement ended on a cryptic and intriguing note. “This is merely au revoir”.

Ross refuses to be bitter or spiteful about The Admiral’s demise. He’s been living with the possibility of this for a decade or so. “It’s been hanging over us for some time,” he said yesterday. “I can’t go into too much detail right now, but having resisted a previous redevelopment plan, a change of the building’s ownership made life even more difficult.

“It was made clear to us that the new owners didn’t want us there and it would simply have taken up too much time and effort to resist them. We had a few years left on our lease, but it was made clear to us this wouldn’t be renewed.”

He expresses deep disappointment that Glasgow City Council refused to lift a finger to help. “I wrote to councillors, pointing out that under the redevelopment plans a significant piece of Glasgow’s culture and nightlife would be erased, but I received only one reply. I felt that what was being proposed could have left the Admiral relatively unscathed, but no one in officialdom seemed interested.”

The Admiral thus joins a depressing roll-call of other city centre taverns which together helped form the character of Glasgow’s city centre: The Iron Horse on West Nile Street; the City Rendezvous on West Campbell Street and Rogano (still lying empty after three years). I tell him that the city council is highly selective in choosing which ventures they deem to be worth saving and which are not.

The sprawling £1Bn Glasgow University development currently engulfing the city’s west end rides a coach and horses through the local plan. The university, though, exercises great power in Glasgow.

Several years ago, the much-loved Caprese Italian restaurant at the top of Buchanan Street was finally forced to bow to the power of developers and a compulsory purchase after years of bureaucratic attrition. Like the Admiral Bar, it had created a community and family atmosphere in the heart of the city. Less than a decade after the forced sale of the restaurant, the Buchanan Galleries which looms over the city’s northern approaches is now set to be pulled down and ‘re-imagined’.

Replacing the Admiral will be a ‘mixed-use’ office block resembling one of those formless, glass-fronted, monoliths that have come to characterise this end of town. Waterloo Street possesses one of the city’s most eye-catching architectural jewels: the intricate, 125-year-old Coltas House, built for the whisky distillers, Wright & Greig whose Rhoderick Dhu blend is immortalised in the pub bearing its name at the eastern end of the street.

To the south and west of Waterloo Street you can still see traces of what was once the city’s thriving Anderston district, before the council opted to drive an eight-lane motorway through it.

As a native Glaswegian, Dave Ross is concerned about the larger implications of The Admiral’s annexation. “We built a community around this pub with its own character and values. The city centre needs to attract people back to live and trade here to re-kindle the city’s sustainable, long-term economy. We felt we were achieving that in a small way.”

The Admiral has an unashamedly leftie, liberal, edgy and avant-garde timbre and this was reflected in the bands that played here and the recent fundraisers the pub has been organising for the trade union movement and the public sector strikers. Hipsway and Franz Ferdinand both launched albums here and Kevin McDermott and Bobby Bluebell will be among the many artists who’ll feature in a two-week programme of farewell events.

At Friday lunchtime, Siobhan reflected on how much this pub had come to mean to her and her staff. “I still can’t quite believe I won’t be working here after next month. The staff here are like my family and this extends to many of our customers who have been coming here for far longer than me.

“The response to the news that we’re closing has been insane, but heartening and a bit overwhelming. Nothing can replace the Admiral but I’m hoping we can create the same atmosphere wherever we go next and that they’ll all come with us.”

She’d like to take some of the fixtures and fittings with her, like the stained glass and brass fittings, but isn’t sure if she’ll be permitted to. At the entrance to the Admiral a notice-board bears the words of Jay Rayner, one of the UK’s top food critics. “Best mac 'n' cheese in Glasgow.”

She’ll be able to take that with her.