The Forge, Parkhead

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The Forge is a retail complex in Parkhead, in the East End of Glasgow, Scotland. Consisting of three elements, a shopping mall, indoor market and retail park, the site is one of Glasgow's largest out-of-town shopping areas. The project was originally born largely out of the GEAR (Glasgow Eastern Area Renewal) initiative of the 1980s.

The complex is built on the site of the old Beardmore's steel works, which was closed in the 1970s. Work began in 1986 on the shopping mall, which opened to the public on October 10, 1988. The initial development housed a Gateway supermarket, a 10-screen multiplex cinema and 40 shop units. The shopping mall was the second of three to be built in Glasgow at roughly the same time, the others being Princes Square in the city centre (opened a few months before), and the St. Enoch Centre, which opened the following year.

At the time of opening, the supermarket was the largest in Scotland, but when Gateway (now known as Somerfield) ran into financial difficulties at the end of the 1980s it disposed of all its large scale outlets to ASDA in 1990. ASDA has remained the owner of The Forge store ever since.

The complex quickly grew, and other elements were added; in 1994 an indoor market was added to the Shettleston Road end of the site, whose success resulted in the closure of the Candleriggs market in the city centre's Merchant City as traders moved eastwards. Between 1996 and 2001, a retail park was added on the western area of the site. The original shopping mall was extended in 2003 to incorporate a store for the Irish department store chain Dunnes Stores.