Silverburn Mall
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The Silverburn centre is a new out of town shopping mall in Glasgow, Scotland. The development replaces the 75 acre (214,000 square foot) Pollok centre with a brand new 1,000,000 square foot mall to be anchored by Next, Marks & Spencers and Debenhams. The scheduled opening date is October 2007. The Centre is expected to house 95 units and 13 for restaurant and cafes. The Centre is expected to cater for a target population from across Scotland from Ayrshire, as far south as Kilmarnock to far north as South Fife area. (Kirkcaldy, Dunfermline etc) The Centre will arguably benefit Ayrshire especially with the near completion of the M77 to Ayr. The Centre will stand on Cowglen Road.
Developed by Retail Property Holdings Ltd (RPH), it will be one of the largest shopping centres in the UK
Scotland's largest Tesco Extra opened in July 2006.
The mall will be Glasgow's fourth out of town mall, following Braehead Shopping Centre, Glasgow Fort and Parkhead Forge. The developers aim to attract wealthy shoppers from affluent suburbs such as Newton Mearns, as well as the towns and villages in Ayrshire.
It is unusual for large out of town shopping malls to open in the UK, as the country's planning laws aim to protect existing town centres [1], and there is some concern about the impact that the Silverburn will have on existing centres especially Braehead and market towns such as Kilmarnock.[2]
Despite these concerns, the impact on Glasgow city centre is expected to be limited and there are significant expansion plans for the city centre's two largest retail malls the St Enoch Centre & Buchanan Galleries. That may explain why Glasgow City Council were in favour of the development, especially Council Leader Charles Gordon, whose political carreer was characterised by ignoring the concerns of surrounding areas and behaving in a dictatorial fashion. With the exception of the Tesco Extra superstore, the Silverburn project is arguably unnecessary, and will most likely impact negatively on small traders in surrounding towns. Such malls do not allow for such retailers and inevitably attract trade away from them. Evidence of the duplicative nature of the project comes from the fact that Debenhams, Next and Marks and Spencer already have large stores in Glasgow East Kilbride and Ayr, and Marks and Spencer and Next in addition at nearby Braehead.
