Edinburgh Military Tattoo: The best seats in the house

Published on Monday 7 December 2009 22:11

As work on a £16m arena for the Edinburgh Military Tattoo at last gets the green light, Brian Ferguson finds the debate over whether the capital has enough top-quality event spaces is still rumbling

FOR almost 35 years it has served one of Scotland's iconic events. But today, after years of debate and uncertainty, work will at last start on a multi-million-pound programme to replace the ageing arena that hosts the Edinburgh Military Tattoo.

The final funding gap in the 16million project to replace grandstands that have been used since 1975, has been filled under a deal which has been at the centre of negotiations for several years.

And in 19 months' time, the 8,500-strong audience which fills Edinburgh Castle Esplanade for the Tattoo will be the first to enjoy the new temporary arena, complete with more legroom, better sightlines and a host of new facilities.

Work to move the complex network of pipes and cables buried under the esplanade will be carried out over the next few months, while the first foundations for the new grandstands are being laid. Within a year, construction on the new stands will be under way, and they will be tried out for the first time the following August.

The Scottish Government and Scottish Enterprise are today expected to confirm that the final funding gap has been filled, with the Tattoo itself expected to bankroll most of the project from its own funds and corporate sponsorship.

The 16m programme is set to revolutionise the experience for the quarter of a million people who flock to events at the esplanade every year.

The public bodies have agreed to match between them the 3m pledged last year by Edinburgh City Council, a move which gave the tattoo authorities the green light to draw up detailed plans for the new stands.

Tattoo organisers had warned privately that the event's long-term future was in peril unless new stands could be secured. Had the funding not been confirmed, then the tattoo would have had to look at staging the event in other sites, including West Princes Street Gardens, long touted as an attractive alternative. The new spectator stands have been greeted as a major boost for the capital's concert-staging infrastructure, but there are huge question marks over where the tattoo's development leaves the hopes for a new arena to be built in the Gardens.

The city's long-held ambitions of boasting an indoor concert space to rival the popular conference centres in Aberdeen and Glasgow have yet to leave the starting blocks either.

The tattoo, which has attracted a sell-out audience of 217,000 for the past ten years, is thought to be worth about 50m to the city's economy.

Major concerts are estimated to be worth another 5m every year, with Rod Stewart and Simply Red already confirmed for next summer's programme.

Tom Jones, Girls Aloud, Simple Minds, Westlife, Paul Simon, The Proclaimers and the Beach Boys are among the acts to grace the esplanade in recent years.

One of the main benefits of the new stands will be to reduce greatly the amount of time the esplanade has construction work taking place on it. The shorter building programme will mean the arena can be used for more events before and after the tattoo is held for three weeks every August.

There are currently seven months of disruption at the esplanade to build and take down the aging stands – work starts at the beginning of April and does not end until late November. This will be reduced to about four months.

The new esplanade arena has been designed by leading Edinburgh-based architects LDN, which was also behind the creation of the Festival Theatre in the 1990s and the refurbishment of the Usher Hall, due for completion early in the new year.

Tom Chambers, major projects manager at the tattoo, said: "It's basically all systems go for the project now. We've got a bit of work planned at the esplanade between now and next March, when we have to start building the arena for next year's tattoo, but that will be the last time (we use those stands], as we're now planning to use the new seating for the first time the following summer.

"A lot of the preliminary work will be about moving the gas, water and electricity utilities that serve the castle and building a new trench for them, but there is also a lot of work to be done on the foundations this winter and at the end of next year."

For Steve Cardownie, Edinburgh city council's festivals and events champion, the city has been crying out for years to see the project happen, for a host of reasons.

He said: "The main problem has been the amount of time it has taken to dismantle these stands. They blight the esplanade for much of the year at the moment, and it'll be fantastic for visitors that the new stands will not block the aesthetics of the castle for so long.

"The castle is an absolutely fantastic arena, and we hear that a lot of acts, like Rod Stewart, ask about coming back here."

Concert promoters have been arguing for years for Edinburgh to improve its infrastructure for major concerts.

Meadowbank Stadium was used for several years to host major shows during the festival season, but is said to have fallen into a state of disrepair, which now makes it unsuitable for such shows, while Murrayfield appears to have lost out to Hampden when it comes to the biggest outdoor gigs featuring the likes of U2 and Take That.

However, The Scotsman recently revealed that long-awaited plans to replace the Ross Bandstand in West Princes Street Gardens had been shelved for the foreseeable future, because of uncertainty over funding.

The gardens now host just two major events a year – the end-of-festival fireworks concert and the main Hogmanay concert.

Many promoters want the city council to prioritise a new indoor arena, although there are mixed views on what kind of events it should be created for and what its capacity should be. One source at the local authority said: "There are already a number of indoor venues in the city, at Ingliston, at the Corn Exchange and with the new-look Usher Hall.

"With Glasgow well provided for in terms of indoor venues, there are doubts over the need for a new venue in Edinburgh, especially in the current climate."

Mr Cardownie added: "The big problem for any future projects is that the council has huge demands on its capital budget over the next few years, and we are going to rely on private investors coming forward if anything is going to happen to the likes of the Ross Bandstand.

"At the moment, we are concentrating on refurbishing existing venues, like the Usher Hall."

Barry Wright, whose company Regular Music has been staging concerts at the castle since the early 1990s, said: "We're absolutely delighted that, after all these years, there are going to be new spectator stands.

"The concerts we put on are worth millions to the economy every year, because of the number of people who stay over in hotels when they go to one. The average spend is something like 150 on top of the actual ticket.

"However, I don't think this project resolves the need to create a new arena in Princes Street Gardens. The esplanade is only really available for six concerts a year to avoid disrupting local residents, and I don't see that changing too much in future."