People Make Glasgow building to be turned into tech hub by innovation-district creator Bruntwood SciTech

A joint venture organisation focused on the creation of tech innovation districts across the UK has made its first move into Scotland with the acquisition of the landmark ‘People Make Glasgow’ building in the centre of the country’s second city.

Bruntwood SciTech, which is a 50-50 partnership between commercial property business Bruntwood and financial services giant Legal & General, aims to turn Glasgow’s Met Tower into a new hub for tech and digital businesses.

The 14-storey building, which was formerly home to the City of Glasgow College and has been empty since 2014, has been acquired from property company Osborne+Co in a deal valued at £16.2m.

Bruntwood SciTech intends to transform it into hub for university spin-outs, start-ups and scale-ups, as well as more-established tech businesses, with the aim of creating a collaborative tech cluster.

Bruntwood SciTech chief executive Kate Lawlor said: “Glasgow has one of Europe’s most exciting, diverse tech and digital clusters with exceptional higher education institutions and clinical assets.

“Met Tower is in a brilliant location for these types of businesses and is perfectly placed to help create a hub in which they can scale, co-innovate and thrive.

“Glasgow’s science and tech sector is rapidly growing, having seen some of the highest growth in the whole of the UK in the past two years, and now makes up 28 per cent of all jobs in the city.

“As a result it has retained its position in the top three leading tech cities in the UK outside of London.

“Our investment in Glasgow is for the long term, and as we’ve demonstrated in our other cities, we are committed to becoming embedded and driving forwards the growth of the knowledge economy and economic impact of the sector both in Glasgow and other parts of Scotland.

“This is our first in hopefully several brilliant projects in the country.”

Renovation work will begin at the building later this year with the expectation that tenants can start moving in in 2024.

Bruntwood SciTech already runs similar operations in Birmingham, Cambridge, Cheshire, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool and Oxford.