What steps it is taking, in partnership with Scottish Enterprise Glasgow, Glasgow City Council and developers, to deal with any underlying …

Scottish Enterprise Glasgow (SEG) continuously monitors market availability and suitability to ensure that all aspects of demand for office accommodation in Glasgow can be accommodated. SEG in partnership with Glasgow City Council has over the last five years assembled and promoted the Strategic Sites Programme, which allows IT companies who wish to build their own facility to purchase serviced sites direct from SEG at seven locations throughout Glasgow. In addition, SEG in partnership with Services to Software operate a incubator facility at 150 St Vincent Street which provides small offices on flexible terms with associated infrastructure and business support facilities. The incubator facility has been fully occupied since it opened three years ago.The city centre office market with a total stock of some 20 million square feet represents the largest office sector outwith London. Modern large scale occupiers with a heavy IT requirement typically require increasingly large floorplates. This is to achieve economies of scale, to provide raised access flooring for underfloor cabling and air conditioning, and a floor to ceiling height of c.2.5 metres. To date there has been no evidence to suggest that the private sector has been unable to provide this standard of accommodation. However, due to the continuing trend for larger floorplates there is increasing evidence of development activity in the Broomielaw. This is primarily due to the fact that the traditional grid iron layout of the city centre cannot provide the size of floorplate some large companies require whereas the Broomielaw can. SEG together with Glasgow City Council and private sector developers have under consideration proposals for the development of business parks at several locations outside of the city centre. SEG in partnership with the private sector are creating a business park at Pacific Quay adjacent to the new National Science Centre. It is envisaged that Pacific Quay will appeal to companies with large IT requirements in the creative industries sector, for example media, design, and software development companies.In September Henry McLeish also announced the proposed inner-city Science Park development adjacent to Strathclyde University at a site which has been assembled by SEG at George Street/Albion Street to the east of the city centre. This projected £60 million development will ultimately provide c.500,000 square feet of office accommodation aimed specifically at target sectors of the economy which includes software, optoelectronics and biotechnology.