£75m revamp is unveiled as Highland Show stays put

Published on Wednesday 8 April 2009 22:08

THE home of the Royal Highland Show is set to get a £75 million makeover after plans to relocate from its base on the outskirts of Edinburgh were scrapped.

New exhibition halls, an indoor concert arena and a hotel will be created under a blueprint being drawn up for the Ingliston site. Its owner yesterday announced it would be staying on the site it has occupied since 1958 for at least 20 years.

The cost of the arena is a fraction of what a new Royal Highland Showground would have cost to create. It was earmarked for the other side of the A8 by 2013 to make way for a long-awaited expansion of Edinburgh Airport.

But the relocation to the arena at Norton Park was effectively shelved after airport operator BAA pulled the plug on its expansion plans until at least 2020. Negotiations over who should foot the cost of the relocation had dragged on for more than five years.

The long-term expansion of the airport has been thrown into further doubt by uncertainty over whether BAA will be forced to sell Edinburgh Airport by the Competition Commission.

The Royal Highland and Agricultural Society for Scotland, which owns the existing showground and organises Scotland's biggest agricultural show every June, yesterday admitted work to improve the arena was long overdue.

It also admitted it had been forced to write off 500,000 it had spent on the plans for the abandoned Norton Park scheme, which would have largely replicated the existing facilities.

Among the latest plans are replacing the McRobert Pavilion and Lowland Hall buildings, creating two major exhibition spaces, a 180-bedroom four-star hotel, and a concert hall capable of hosting events with a capacity of up to 6,000.

Ray Jones, chief executive of RHASS, said: "We've not had any major improvements at the site here since 2003, when our Highland Hall was unveiled and the white paper agreeing to the airport expansion was published. We've been in limbo ever since.

"We've no idea what will happen with the airport expansion now, but we're planning on the basis of being here for at least the next 20 years.

"We hope to begin work on these improvements at some point next year, but we need the city council to agree to lift planning restrictions, which have been in place over the site due to the airport expansion," Mr Jones said.

Tom Buchanan, economic development leader at City of Edinburgh Council, said: "The Royal Highland Show is obviously a premiere event and it is vital that it takes place in the best possible environment.

"It's vital that a major destination like this seeks to reinvent itself on a regular basis."