GARAGE IS BACK...

Club to reopen as an indoor beer garden

ASAUCHIEHALL Street institution is reopening its door s t oday t o welcome back regulars for the first time in seven months.

Bosses at The Garage have been working since March to bring The Electric Gardens at The Garage to Glasgow.

The inspiration behind the new indoor beer garden comes from the first of its kind dance club in Glasgow – also named The Electric Gardens – which was located in the Sauchiehall Street building in the 1970s.

The recreation of the space provides a tropical buzz with capacity to host 240 customers at one time in a safe, socially distant environment.

Andy Clark, head of marketing at The Garage, said: “While we know our regulars miss the night club, we’re excited to bring something new to The Garage and I hope that when they see it for the first time, they are taken aback and amazed with the work that we’ve done.

“We’ve done this for those who have missed us, because we’ve missed them.

“If we didn’t reopen as a bar, there would have been redundancies if we couldn’t get open and at least generate some money. We need to do this to give us a fighting chance – we’ll be okay though.”

Staff are expecting to be kept busy as the beer garden opens today with 1000 people booked in for two- hour slots already – meaning the venue is fully booked right up until Hallowe’en weekend. The cultural beacon is decorated in hanging flowers and fairy lights where the loss of music has been compensated for with artificial visuals.

Andy added: “At the back of the bar, there will be a waterfall effect shown on the video screen.

“We’ve got visuals, moving graphics and changing pictures throughout the bar create that electric atmosphere. Although we can’t have music right now, we’ve taken as much as we can into consideration to really get the electric vibe and atmosphere going – even the lighting, too.”

While bosses are excited to bring something new to the renowned night club, they have promised that The Garage will return as normal to Glasgow after Covid- 19.

Gavin McGreish, operations manager, said: “The Garage will reopen as a nightclub when we can. “The main purpose of us doing this is to save as many jobs as we can. Over the years, we’ve built up some very, very good staff that we don’t ever want to lose. We’re going to be operating at a tenth of our capacity so it’s not really as sustainable as what we hoped but we are going to make sure we survive and come out the other end.”

Ahead of its reopening, Andy added: “Every day has been a school day and turning The Garage into this was a school day. The staff all being re- trained was a massive school day. I hope people can come to support us and bear with us as we find our feet for the first week or so in our new normal.”