The Social Hub: A unique British experiment in property

“If you pitched the idea of The Social Hub on Dragons’ Den, I think the Dragons would have a few questions,” says Abdul Eneser, with a wry smile. He is a final-year law student at the University of Strathclyde and resident of The Social Hub in the heart of Glasgow. I’ve arranged to meet him in a 250-seat conference room on the ground floor of the vast building, which is used for business and community events.

“Businesses will book conference spaces like this,” says Eneser, “knowing that just outside these doors there are students like me, walking about in their pyjamas, waiting to use the laundry.”

Indeed, there’s a big sign for the laundry room, called The Steamie, just outside, and the washing machines are lit up with blue neon lights, making the room look like a nightclub, keeping with the Hub’s cool aesthetic.

But Eneser says any misgivings between the Hub’s varied guests don’t last long. Despite his own initial doubts, he loves being based at The Social Hub and he says everyone gets along very well, enjoying the social mix. He regularly interacts with business people who use the coworking space as well as the hotel guests. “You naturally strike up a conversation sitting at the bar,” says Eneser. He’s even made some useful business contacts, thinking ahead to life after university.

It is precisely connections like these that The Social Hub is designed to facilitate. The laundry was placed in the central atrium to be a focal point for people to meet. The Hub, as residents call it for short, aspires to create as many of what it calls “creative collisions” as possible.

Glasgow has a student population of around 80,000 people, coming from more than 130 countries, across its various universities with a growing Asian contingent in recent years. The demand for student accommodation is clear.

But there is an abundance of coworking spaces these days, so why would companies, or indeed freelancers, choose to base themselves in a building with students? I caught up with one regular to find out.

Paul Crumbie is an executive assistant at creative agency MadeBrave. “It’s like being part of a family and a community,” he explains. He is from London and didn’t know anyone before he relocated to Glasgow, where his company is based. The Hub has “opened up a new world” to him very quickly, he says.

One main reason is the regular community events for all Hub users. You can browse and book them on an app and they include yoga and fitness classes, art and cooking workshops, business networking and mentoring sessions – even classes about the Glaswegian language and dialect. At the latter, for example, Crumbie learnt that the word “crabbit” means bad-tempered.

The community aspect appeals to him on a personal level, but there are also benefits for the business, he explains. His company has clients and staff from across the UK. If they want to come together and meet for a few days of brainstorming or training, they can all base themselves at the Hub.

Freelancers also enjoy the sense of community, he says, from events such as Christmas parties. The public can access the restaurants or terrace and are invited to some of the cultural events designed for the wider community, adding to the mix.

The hub is also a 4-star hotel, which you can book on the usual platforms. Who does that appeal to?

Rachael Arnold lives in Banff just north of Aberdeen. I found her in the lobby working on her laptop and a Hub concierge introduced me to her as a regular. She runs the Creative Entrepreneurs Club and often comes down to Glasgow, as she is Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Hotel chains are generic and “depressing”, she says. She enjoys Airbnbs with character, but you don’t get to meet people as a solo business traveller. “I love going to a lot of the events that go on here at The Hub,” she says. “They’re varied and interesting and the networking here is amazing.”

Touring musicians and film crews often use The Social Hub for long stays while they are on an assignment, bringing a bit of extra colour and glamour to an operation that began as something much simpler but, thanks to the brains behind the business, has grown and widened its horizons.

The Social Hub is the brainchild of Charles MacGregor, a Scottish entrepreneur, who founded his company in 2012. However, he didn’t launch the concept in the UK. His first social hub building was in Amsterdam, where his company is headquartered. The Glasgow one, in Candleriggs Square, became the 18th hub in his portfolio when it opened in April last year. There are now 21 hubs around Europe, with a combined real estate value of more than £2bn. This includes two hubs in Amsterdam, as well as others in Barcelona, Berlin, Florence, Vienna and Porto.

The chain opened its second property in Florence at the beginning of this year, with the city’s largest rooftop garden complete with an Olympic-length swimming pool. The 80,000 sq m Hub in the San Jacopino district cost €150m to build.

The Hubs are all huge buildings which require a lot of capital to set up. The Social Hub in Glasgow covers 20,000 sq ft, has close to 500 bedrooms and 200 coworking spaces. It cost £90m to develop. The business has scaled thanks to more than $3bn in funding from institutional investors, including Singapore’s GIC fund and Dutch pension provider APG.

The business had to pivot to find this lucrative niche in the commercial property market. MacGregor’s company was originally called The Student Hotel, and his initial insight was that despite a huge demand for student accommodation, much of it was generic and unstimulating. It was also often left empty outside of term-time, even though there was huge demand from tourists for space. He focused on building student accommodation with character, which treated students as young adults. In time, he found that parents who were visiting their children at university also needed accommodation. His buildings began to offer rooms to them too, like a hotel.

MacGregor grew up in Edinburgh and his father ran a construction firm in the 1980s that made the first purpose-built student accommodation with the university there, before expanding into England. He helped his father out on site, fitting out the rooms. He got to know the industry up close, down to the smallest details. After a time dabbling in other industries, including car dealerships, he followed his father into commercial property.

MacGregor’s company grew steadily but he changed the name from The Student Hotel to The Social Hub in 2022, having realised that the market was bigger than just accommodation for students and their families. He broadened his customer base to include digital nomads and the growing breed of hybrid workers, who emerged during the pandemic.

This innovatory and responsive approach is something more commonly seen in the world of tech and software. But the commercial property industry is also witnessing bold experiments at the moment and The Social Hub is just one example of it.

“There is a fundamental shift in commercial real estate toward ‘hypermixity’,” says Zoe Ellis-Moore, the founder of Spaces to Places, which advises companies on how to find flexible office space. “This means multifunctional spaces that blend traditional boundaries between work, accommodation and lifestyle services. This represents a move away from conventional triple net lease models toward operationally intensive real estate that prioritises experience.”

Triple net lease models are agreements where tenants pay their base rate plus the three major operating expenses – property taxes, insurance and maintenance – thus shifting the landlord’s liabilities to the tenant.

Other examples of this trend in real estate include Arding & Hobbs in Clapham Junction, London, where coworking space provider x+why is working alongside Third Space gym, Prezzemolo & Vitale delicatessen and Botanical Hall restaurant to create an all-round work and lifestyle concept in a former Edwardian department store. Or there is private members club Mortimer House, recently opened in central London, which models its offer on the psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (a pyramid with basic human needs such as food and water at the bottom and “self-actualisation” needs such as creativity at the top). It has not only co-working spaces but also wellness packages and cultural activities such as a Knit & Crochet Cocktail Club and Matcha Mocktails workshop.

Businesses in commercial real estate are entering the “hypermix” space from all angles. Hotels are branching into workspaces, with Village Hotels operating its VWorks brand across 18 UK locations, while Accor has partnered with Wojo to create 1,200 coworking spaces in its European hotel network.

And some coworking space providers are beginning to offer hotel-style accommodation. For example, the Office Space in Town group this year launched The Cabins, five luxury bedrooms at its Monument location in central London. It promises “hotel-quality overnight stays for tenants and their guests, as increasing numbers of commuters want to play late in the city and skip the morning rush hour”.

However appealing this trend may be from a business perspective, there are important considerations for all these operators, warns Ellis-Moore. “Operating mixed-use spaces requires significantly more complex management than single-purpose buildings,” she says. “The convergence reflects genuine lifestyle changes, including working from anywhere and the erosion of the working week, but the challenge lies in executing and sustaining business models across multiple revenue streams.”

Back in the lobby at The Social Hub in Glasgow I encounter Abdul Eneser again. Visually impaired and using a white cane, he was worried that the building would prove a chaotic place to be based, which wouldn’t suit his physical needs. But he has thrived because it meets his social and emotional needs.

“If a business person were to go to a hostel they would feel like they don’t belong there,” says Eneser, “because it’s just for young people. But if a young person was to go to a 5-star hotel they would feel like they don’t belong because it’s too corporate.

“What this place has got down to a tee is that everyone belongs here. We’re all different but share the same space.”