So much more than a hotel
5
5
Date of visit: October 2025
Overall Rating
Excellent
When you look up The Social Hub on a maps app, it will probably tell you that it is a hotel, but as the name implies, it is so much more. The first two floors are full of communal areas with foosball, ping pong, comfy seating, an auditorium, a café, a restaurant and even a gym. There is even a rooftop bar, but I did not get that far. It is a very stylish venue and the name is probably well chosen because it reminds me more of social media than of a community hub. It seems to be a very popular place and while I felt at first a bit worried that I would have to justify my attendance or that it would turn out I had to be paying to be there, those worries turned out not to be true. I first visited as part of the Scottish Queer International Film Festival (SQIFF), which does a great job at prioritising accessibility and communicating access information. I hope my review can expand on that work! A couple of days later, I went to the restaurant for a bite to eat after another SQIFF screening, which was comfortable and handy, but I would probably not do it again considering that it was quite expensive and did not have a lot of vegan and vegetarian choices.
Disabled Access In and Around
Good
There is a little plaza between the car park on Brunswick Street and the building, with the building along two sides of it. The main entrance is on the left side through automatic sliding doors into a vestibule that takes you down to the left and then through another set of automatic sliding doors to your right. You enter into an open plan space with the reception to your right and table and booth seating to your left in front of the door to the auditorium/theatre. There is a merch shop and a café counter as well as the restaurant around the corner to your left. The upper parts of the fridge and shop displays are not really accessible from a seated position. (More on the auditorium and the restaurant later.) Straight ahead from the main entrance is communal space with comfy seats, table tennis and foosball. There are gender-neutral bathrooms through a door on the left before you get to the lifts. Going past the lifts on the right takes you into a corridor with the gym on the right and a shower and accessible bathroom on the left. The stairs are to the right of the walkway next to the lifts. There are two small lifts – not large enough to turn around in but not awkwardly narrow for entering and exiting. They have handrails on all sides and a mirror at the back. The call button is between the two lifts. It has a raised arrow but no Braille. The buttons on the inside have light up numbers and Braille to the left of the buttons. To get to the hotel floors, you need to scan your key card on a black box above the buttons. There is a hearing loop in the lift. The first floor has a communal area with table and chair seating, bar-height seating and sofa seating. There are counters for tea and coffee machines and a small bar. They are both medium-height and the bar is open to the side. There is a door to more toilets between the bar and the drinks counter. There are non-automatic doors to several coworking spaces. The auditorium has non-automatic double doors with vertical metal bar handles that open to the outside. You enter into the area in front of the screen, which is on your left and ascending rows of upholstered bench seating with backrests to your right. There are twelve rows and steps to either side of them. There are contrast markings on the steps and handrails on the outside, not on the side of the seats. While you can enter the restaurant through the lobby, there is a separate set of double doors on the left side of the building from the wee plaza. There are double glass doors that open to the outside with a button on the right-hand side. The button to open them from the inside is on the left. The restaurant has a variety of seating options: tables with moveable chairs, the ones by the door having bench seating on two sides, booths, bar-height seating both at the bar and at tables. The chairs and stools have backrests and no armrests. There are no lowered sections for the bar or café counters. The menu is printed in black on white. There are a few plant-based options, but apart from the desserts, there is only one vegan option per category (starter, main, side). The music is prominent, but not so loud that you could not hear someone talk. There is a snug on the far end of the restaurant that can be divided off with a long black curtain. When I visited for SQIFF, it was used as a quiet space. There is sofa seating as well as booths and bar height seating around the side and moveable chairs. For the quiet space, they also had bean bags, free masks, fidgets, drinks and an area that was cleared as a prayer space. There are large clear windows facing out onto Trongate and a locked set of frosted glass doors.
Accessible facilities: Lift to all areas, Step-free entrance, Seating at regular intervals
Parking & Transport
Good
I travelled to this place by personal vehicle
While the address is Candleriggs, the entrance is actually on the back of the building facing Brunswick Street and Brunswick Lane. There is a small car park there but no Blue Badge spaces. The closest you can get dropped off is there, which is still a good few metres from the entrance, as the space in front of it is car-free. The footpaths in the area are tiled in stones, which is generally even but not necessarily smooth. The lowered curbs are properly low, but there are no tactile markings. There is some on-street parking on Wilson Street as well as the NCP The Glasshouse multi-storey car park around the corner on Glassford Street. The NCP King Street surface carpark is a 0.2-mile/4-minute walk or wheel away. The Social Hub is a 0.2-mile/5-minute walk or wheel from Argyle Street Station, 0.4 miles/8 minutes from High Street Station, a 0.4-mile/10-minute walk or wheel from Queen Street and 0.5 miles/12 minutes from Central Station. The closest Subway station is St Enoch, one of two wheelchair-accessible Glasgow subway stations (along with Govan), half a mile or 11 minutes away by walk or wheel. The closest bus stops are Candleriggs (2, 18, 18A, 60, 60A, 61, 64, 240 Lanarkshire connect, 255, 263, CB4, N2, N18. N240) and Stockwell Street (2, 60, 60A, 61, 64). The Trongate bus stop on Stockwell Street (1, 1A, 1C, 1E, 21, 64, 267, N267, X4) is about 160 metres away.
Accessible facilities: Public or on street parking
Accessible Toilets
Good
There are gender-neutral cubicle toilets on both the ground and first floor. The doors are single non-automatic doors opening to the inside left (ground floor) and right (first floor). The door and corridor with the cubicles in the ground floor bathroom was large enough for me to easily get in with my wheelchair and turn around. There is a large accessible bathroom heading from the main entrance straight all the way to the back and then it is on the left side. The door opens to the outside inside right. No key is needed to access the bathroom. There is no door opener. The handle on both sides is a lever. There is a handrail and a mirror on the back of the door and it locks with a twist lever. There is a baby change, a large footpedal bin and a fold-out seat on the wall to your right when you come in. The sink is on the back wall. The toilet and the shower are on the wall to your left. There is a fixed vertical and a horizontal handrail to the right of the toilet that can be lifted and moved out of the way and a fixed horizontal handrail on the wall to the left of the toilet. The flush is a lever on the side of the cistern. There is no toilet paper holder and the roll is on the wall-mounted horizontal handrail. There is a narrow sanitary bin underneath. There is space for a left-side transfer. The red cord is to the left of the toilet and the sink. There are vertical handrails on either side of the sink. The sink is a small wall-mounted sink and the tap on the back left of the basin has a short lever. There is a wall-mounted soap dispenser above the sink. There is a wall-mounted paper towel dispenser a bit to the right of the sink with a bin underneath. There is a fold-out wall-mounted seat on the wall to the right as you enter. With fixed vertical and moveable horizontal handrails on either side, two on the right. There is space for a right hand transfer or a left hand transfer if sitting sideways. There is something that looks like a colostomy shelf above it, but it is so high up that it is unusable. There is a fold-out wall-mounted seat on the wall to the left of the door as you enter with a fixed vertical and a moveable horizontal handrail to the right with space for a left hand transfer or a right hand transfer if sitting sideways. To the right of the seat is a wall-mounted overhead and a handshower with a horizontal handrail underneath and fixed vertical and a moveable horizontal handrail to the right. There is another red cord to the right of the shower. There is a baby changing table standing to the right of the door with a large footpedal bin to its left.
Facilities: Accessible toilet
Staff
Good
One of the servers in the restaurant was especially lovely and made me feel very welcome. I think there maybe was a mixup when they went on break because it took quite a while for another server to come to take my order and he said it was his bad. On another occasion when I asked where to find the snug, the employee was very helpful and walked me all the way there.
