Glasgow City Council Leader Susan Aitken has indicated that construction work on the fire-damaged Union Corner site may not commence for another five to six years. The extensive planning and consultation processes are projected to continue until approximately 2030, a timeline largely attributed to the building’s intricate ownership arrangements.
The complexity of the site’s ownership is a significant factor in the anticipated delays. The B-listed Victorian building is managed by property company Stelmain on behalf of Dunaskin Properties, while the ground-floor retail unit where the blaze originated is owned by a separate landlord, Afton Estates Limited. When the council attempted to trace the occupier, correspondence was returned with the note that the owners had “gone away” – a trail that ultimately led journalists from Hamilton’s Regent Shopping Centre back to an informally transferred network of shopkeepers with scant official footprint.
Councillor Aitken shared her assessment at a recent event organised by the online newspaper, The Glasgow Bell. Her estimated timescale is reportedly shared by other senior officials within the local authority.
The site, located at the junction of Union Street and Gordon Street, was severely damaged by a significant fire that erupted on 8 March 2026. The blaze originated in a vape shop on the ground floor of the B-listed Victorian commercial building, which dates back to 1851, predating Glasgow Central Station. The fire led to the partial collapse of the structure, leaving only the façade standing, with the iconic corner dome also succumbing to the inferno.
Glasgow City Council is currently focused on immediate safety measures to facilitate the reopening of Union Street. A spokesperson for Glasgow City Council stated: “We are continuing to work on making the site safe – at this point, focusing on works on the western gable wall – with a view to reopening Union Street as quickly as possible.”
The spokesperson added, “Beyond that, we are working with the owners on how the site will look and feel and how it could be used in the short, medium and long-term.”
A recovery group has been established, comprising representatives from various design and architecture firms, to help chart a strategic path forward for the area surrounding Glasgow Central Station.
Building ownership – National issue?
The Union Corner fire laid bare a problem endemic to Scotland’s ageing commercial building stock: a labyrinthine web of ownership that makes accountability almost impossible to establish.
.As legal experts have noted, Union Corner is “likely to be typical of many historic city-centre buildings, with individual shops and floors held under separate property titles,” and where title deeds drafted at different times contain inconsistent provisions under Scots law and the Tenements (Scotland) Act 2004.
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The same dysfunction haunts commercial properties across Scotland: in Aberdeen, where a local businesswoman made headlines as recently as May 2026 calling out absentee landlords for leaving heritage buildings in the city centre vacant and neglected for years, the challenge of tracing who actually owns a property is compounded by the fact that the Land Register can take months or years to update following a sale, and the older Sasine Register is notoriously difficult to search.
Scottish councils have limited tools to compel action: they can secure dangerous structures, issue notices, and in extreme cases pursue compulsory purchase, but the process is slow, costly, and burdensome to prove.
The prospect of stronger intervention through Compulsory Sale Orders, which would allow planning authorities to force the auction of long-term vacant or derelict sites, has been repeatedly delayed, with the Scottish Government admitting in a 2025 consultation that the powers still had not been legislated, years after being first proposed.
