June 6 2025

Inverclyde Council has given the final go-ahead to a £24m transformation of Greenock to improve the setting of the town hall.

The public realm project comprises the demolition of Hector McNeil House, the Bullring Roundabout, eastern side of the Oak Mall Shopping Centre and the A78 flyover.

A sequence of street-level junctions controlled by traffic lights will take their place, surrounded by new parkland and a redesigned mall entrance by INCH Architecture & Design.  This will remove vacant floor space with the remainder given greater outwards focus, with at grade crossings improving town centre connectivity.

Councillor Stephen McCabe, leader of Inverclyde Council, said: “This is the biggest project of its kind in a generation with the aim of transforming central Greenock and the town centre for the better and is really exciting."

Balfour Beatty is expected to begin site clearance works in the autumn for completion in 2027. 

3 Comments

#1 Posted by Roddy_ on 6 Jun 2025 at 11:59 AM

Removing the elevated roads is a welcome development, but if - as in the first image - the roads remain without being downgraded, the streets will still form very considerable barriers to movement. The image above still looks very vehicle-orientated.
Removing these high-level roads should be geared towards how the street edges could be re-occupied - with the vast adjacent areas of surface car parking redeveloped for housing, mixed use and other civic spaces. If parking is required then it should be accommodated in multi-storey car parks with active ground floors.
How then should the streets look? Calmed and greened with pedestrians as the priority. This still looks like an edge-of-town junction right in the heart of things.

#2 Posted by kerblam on 6 Jun 2025 at 15:34 PM

Agree with #1, the Bullring ain't pretty but it works very efficiently in traffic terms. The trade off against the chaos involved in removing it would have to be a vast improvement to the public realm, walkability and connectedness, and setting of the Town Hall. Ideally a new centrepiece for the town centre. I see no sign of any of that in these admittedly basic visuals- pedestrians lost in a sea of tarmac, car parks and crossings through multi-lane traffic, with some vague grassed areas (no paths, landscaping, features?) and 40% less of the shopping centre. I hope some nice detailing will follow but I suspect the money will be gone by then. Hugely underwhelming.

#3 Posted by Fat Bloke on Tour on 6 Jun 2025 at 16:17 PM

Traffic in Greenock needs to be reorganised with more vehicles using Drumfochar Street as a through route to the A78 and Spango Valley.

The heavy failing town vibe should be used to redevlopments advantage -- low economic activity means low land / building coasts so limited road improvements on a network basis should be possible.

Interesting to see the build economics / value dynamic in the local authority's efforts -- it would seem to be more about demolition than large scale rebuilding.

If only they could re-site the Lidl store and Kwik Fit -- might be able to link Victorian Greenock into a semblance of connected spaces.

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