Parts of Glasgow city centre will be a “literal” building site for the next few years but will be “absolutely” worth it, Susan Aitken has said.

The council leader was speaking about the ongoing transformation underway in some of the city’s busiest streets.

At the Glasgow Business Awards, Aitken said the disruption people are experiencing just now will produce benefits for everyone who uses the city centre.

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Work continues on Sauchiehall Street, with Argyle Street, George Square and surrounding streets due to see work commence soon as part of the Avenues project and a redesign of the city’s most famous square.

(Image: newsquest)

The council leader said on completion it will all be worth the effort.

Aitken said: “I'm going to be honest with you. Over the next few years, various parts of the city centre are going to be literally building sites and that includes George Square, but I can assure you it is absolutely going to be building for the better.

“And the new city centre that's going to emerge from that will be totally worth the effort.

“It will still be the Glasgow city centre that we know and love, but brighter, fresher, healthier and more accessible and I think, incredibly vibrant, even more vibrant than it is just now.”

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Aitken told business leaders at the event hosted by Glasgow Chamber of Commerce the city was seeing success stories as it looks to recover from the covid pandemic.

She said: “While some aspects of our economy have changed for good and are not going to come back, and that will take some getting used to, there are plenty examples of positive change and in a lot of areas actually are returning to pre Covid levels of performance.

“To give just one example, the visitor numbers that were unveiled last week for last year for 2023 are a case in point.

“Almost 26 million people visited Glasgow last year and they contributed £2.3 billion to our city economy.”

(Image: newsquest)

Aitken said there was more investment coming to Glasgow.

She said: “The transition that we're experiencing and particularly in the city centre, is inevitably going to have some disruptions and the occasional setback over the next couple of years but we are attracting record levels of investment.

“We've got billions of committed development in the pipeline and we're already seeing parts of the city that have been gap sites for decades in some cases now, with new homes, new businesses coming out of the ground, literally and creating new neighbourhoods in our city again.”