City college annexe sold in £1.7m deal

From: Glasgow Evening Times, UK - 09 Jan 2003

by Gerry Braiden

THE sale of a historic Glasgow college building has finally been completed.

And now bosses at Langside College, in the south side, plan to use hundreds of thousands of pounds profit from the deal to fund an open learning centre in the city's Govanhill area.

The Evening Times revealed 18 months ago that the B-listed Prospect Building would be sold to make way for luxury flats in a bid to help the college clear its crippling debt.

Fury erupted among some architectural heritage groups, who feared the former Deaf and Dumb Institute would be bulldozed.

But construction firm Abbey Projects gave assurances the building would remain intact when it is turned into flats.

The £1.69million sale was completed this week, allowing college bosses to repay a £1.45m grant from the Scottish Further Education Funding Council to improve the remaining facilities.

With a surplus profit of £249,000 Langside's principal Graeme Hyslop has pledged to plough cash into a learning centre at the old Samaritans Hospital on Victoria Road, a fledgling enterprise centre run by Govanhill Community Development Trust.

Mr Hyslop said: "We're hoping to run information and technology courses as well as care provision, which is much-needed in the area.

"We thought the deal would have been finalised before this but for the last few months it has been in the hands of the lawyers."

Lawrence McCabe, community economic development officer at the Trust, said: "We're at an advanced stage with the college about what we want to do.

"There is a need for skills in the area and to get people in to employment. We still have a lot of work to be do but we're hopeful now that the project is healthy in terms of funding."

Copyright © 2003 SMG Newspapers Ltd. All Rights Reserved