LAND where a former bustling nightclub once stood will become a car park after efforts to create a green idyll were scrapped.

Councillors approved a 63-space car park for the former GLAM nightclub site, off Stockton High Street, on Thursday afternoon. 

Plans were drawn up for the former nightspot to make way for a tree-lined “pocket park”  in 2019. 

But a vision to demolish the Castlegate shopping centre to create a huge riverside green space has been lined up for the high street since then. 

GLAM shut its doors for the final time in 2013.

It was a cinema until 1981 but reopened as The Mall in 1987 – and saw rebirths as Visage in 1995 and Zanzibar in 2000.

The council spent £2.5m on demolishing the former post office and nightclub.

Authority bosses bought up the wider site several years ago to avoid their “undesirable use” and to tie it into the wider town centre regeneration vision.

It was eventually demolished in the spring of 2020. 

All 13 members of Stockton Council’s planning committee agreed to back the extra spaces on the stretch. 

Cllr Lynn Hall said she used to park on part of the site when she visited the old Corporation Hall. 

The Conservative member for Hartburn added: “I’ve never been in favour of its use as a pocket park so I’m quite pleased it’s come back as some form of parking.”

She was also critical of how the plans were “the first time they’d heard” the pocket park had been dropped in favour of a car park. 

Five of the 63 spaces will be disabled bays.

Town centre councillor Paul Kirton had wanted to see the land sorted sooner than it was. 

“They don’t seem to have bothered until now,” he added. “It’s taken a long time to tidy it up. But it will be an asset to the town I’m sure.”