In the heart of Glasgow city centre, nestled between shops, bars, offices and hotels, sits the Mackintosh Tearooms, the last surviving tearoom designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and one of the city’s most treasured heritage sites.
But last week passersby noticed a shiny new shopfront next door to the 1903 category A-listed building: hot-pink capital letters on a white plastic sign, advertising a vape and mobile phone repair shop.
Six months on from a vape shop fire that destroyed the B-listed Union Corner, and almost a decade after the second of two blazes devastated the Mackintosh-designed Glasgow School of Art building in 2018, the decision to allow the shop to open in such a location has drawn ire and opposition from local people and campaigners.
The Scottish fire and rescue service confirmed in the days after the Union Corner fire that it had started in a vape shop. A subsequent audit of other vape shops found a range of fire safety issues, including a lack of awareness about legislation and fire safety duties.
“The Mackintosh Tearooms are an architecture and design gem, an important part of Glasgow’s story and a real boost for tourism in the city,” said Matthew Williams, the director of the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society, which promotes and protects the architect and designer’s work. “The increased risk of fire posed by a vape shop next door is completely unacceptable.”
The society called on Glasgow city council and the Scottish government to halt the opening of the shop, which sits within the Sauchiehall Street culture and heritage district, a 10-year regeneration plan for the historically significant area.
They pointed out the street was also home to the C-listed ABC music venue, which burned down in the 2018 art school fire, and the historic Centre for Contemporary Arts, which closed this year after prolonged financial troubles.
“It would be a further cultural tragedy if the Mackintosh Tearooms also went up in flames,” Williams said. “Prevention is better than cure, so politicians and officials must act without delay.”
Sarah Thomas, 32, who moved to Glasgow in the early 2010s to study at the art school, said the loss of that building was “a heartbreak that the city can’t go through again”.
She added: “There’s so much beautiful architecture and important heritage in Glasgow, but it sometimes feels like there’s nobody looking out for it. It’s hard to understand how a shop filled with flammables can be allowed to open next to a listed building full of historical artefacts. It does make you despair a bit.”
Glasgow city council said the premises had long been granted permission to operate as a shop. There is no licensing framework for vape shops in Scotland.
After the Union Corner fire, the council urged the Scottish government to strengthen regulation, but Holyrood said decisions on local planning applications were the responsibility of the local authority.
Paul Sweeney, a Labour MSP for Glasgow, in March called for a ban on vape shops being allowed to operate in historic buildings. Speaking of the new unit next to the Mackintosh Tearooms, he said he was “astonished the government hasn’t [already] responded with more urgency” on planning reform.
“We could see a similar potential scenario playing out all around Glasgow – if you take a stroll through the city you’ll see umpteen of these vape emporiums and tat shops in historical buildings that are clearly vulnerable to fire,” Sweeney said. “The government needs to move much more quickly.”
Glasgow School of Art, which had previously committed to a faithful restoration of the Mackintosh building, said in July it would not be able to complete the project without further financial support.
The Union Corner site is expected to be brought back into use this year, but a new permanent structure is not expected until 2031.
In the meantime, Glasgow’s residents continue to find creative ways to make their opposition clear. Ashley Rawson, a street artist, responded to the new shop last week by visiting with his “unexploded vape” artwork: a sculpture, first produced in response to the Union Corner fire, depicting a metre-long vape labelled “burnt heritage flavour”.
In an Instagram video set to the soundtrack of Billy Joel’s 1989 hit We Didn’t Start the Fire, Rawson said: “Is this really the Sauchiehall Street heritage approach that we’re looking for? Aren’t we learning from Union Corner, from the art school? I just don’t know, it’s a bit flabbergasting.”
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