A £10 MILLION project to make the Willow Tea Rooms into Glasgow’s tourism equivalent of the Gaudi cathedral in Barcelona has begun. The trust that cares for the historic Charles Rennie Mackintosh site says the cafe could become a “focal point for cultural tourism”, drawing visitors to Scotland’s biggest city in the same way the Sagrada Familia and other Antoni Gaudi buildings bring tourists to the Catalan capital.

The initiative will restore, preserve and recreate the unique eaterie, while adding a visitor centre, exhibition and learning facility at the Sauchiehall Street site.

Organisers hope it will welcome more than 150,000 people every year once work is completed in time for the 150th anniversary celebrations of the architect’s birth on June 7, 2018.

Launching the project yesterday, Celia Sinclair, founder of the Willow Tea Rooms Trust, said: “The Tea Rooms are a catalyst for the regeneration of Sauchiehall Street and will become a focal point for cultural tourism, attracting both domestic and international visitors. Just as many people intrinsically link Barcelona with Gaudi and Frank Lloyd Wright with Chicago, we want them to visit Glasgow to see Mackintosh.

“The building will give countless visitors the opportunity to enjoy a cup of tea in the unique surroundings of the Willow Tea Rooms and the education and learning centre will welcome 2500 school children every year, many from disadvantaged backgrounds.”

The Willow Tea Rooms were opened by entrepreneur Catherine Cranston in 1903 in a four-storey former warehouse, with Mackintosh and his collaborator wife Margaret MacDonald given control of all aspects of design, including the furniture, decoration, colour scheme, cutlery and staff uniforms.

The plan included separate spaces dedicated to men and women, including the Salon de Luxe, which included one of MacDonald’s most famous works, a gesso panel inspired by a sonnet by the Pre-Raphaelite poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

The business was sold following the death of Cranston’s husband and was incorporated into upmarket department store Daly’s in the late 1920s, with parts of the premises remaining in use until the shop closed around 50 years later.

Refurbishment work took place in the early 1980s before a new business called the Willow Team Rooms began operating there. It has since relocated and the Willow Tea Rooms Trust purchased the building two years ago to prevent its forced sale and stop the contents being stripped out and sold to collectors through the international art market.

The project, starting with urgent exterior repairs, includes restoring the Salon de Luxe to its “former glory” and making more than 400 pieces of furniture to original designs. Sinclair said: “The Willow Tea Rooms will be the only Mackintosh building where members of the public can still enjoy and participate in the building’s original use, namely taking tea and dining in an authentic Mackintosh interior.”

Pamela Robertson, emerita professor of Mackintosh studies and senior curator at Glasgow University, said: “The Willow Tea Rooms are of outstanding importance in Mackintosh’s career as one of his most accomplished interiors, where he had input as an architect and designer. The building will provide a unique experience for visitors, telling the rich story of Glasgow’s rise as an economic powerhouse at the turn of the last century.”

Lucy Casot, head of the Heritage Lottery Fund in Scotland, which is supporting the project, said: “What better way to celebrate the end of the Year of Architecture than to see work start on the restoration of these famous Tea Rooms?

“Thanks to players of the National Lottery, works by one of Scotland’s greatest and most influential designers will be restored so they can be enjoyed by all as they were first intended.”