Springside: 'It is reassuring to hear that work will not stop'

Published on Monday 7 September 2009 09:38

IT IS a worrying sign of the times that the Springside development appears to have run into difficulties.

As the News reveals today, in the last four months only ONE flat has been sold at the huge site where the Fountain Brewery once stood.

This is a massive disappointment for the developers, especially as they sold 17 apartments in an initial flurry of interest before the first of them was even completed in April.

It seems obvious that the downturn in fortune for the marketing of the site is directly related to that of the economy as a whole.

One of the Springside consortium members is the Royal Bank of Scotland, and it is hard to avoid the irony that other partners blame their problems on the hard-pressed banking industry's reluctance to agree mortgages for new-builds.

The consortium now finds itself with dozens of unsold properties and a commitment to building another 100 next year. With the housing market across Scotland remaining sluggish that must be an unwelcome burden.

It is reassuring, then, to hear one consortium director say that – unlike some other high-profile building projects in the city – work on the site will not stop. Instead, the developers are looking at other ownership models for the properties, though they insist that the ratio of residential to commercial will not change.

This is a welcome and long-sighted view. We can only hope it is rewarded with a much-needed upturn in the market.

'Dramatic results'

WE'VE all chuckled – or in some cases spluttered – at stories of young tearaways being given holidays in the sun or otherwise treated softly by touchy-feely authorities.

On the face of it, a scheme which took troubled youngsters horse-riding could be another piece of right-on nonsense. But the Lothian and Borders Police project we report on today is not.

It involved 13 kids aged 15 to 17 who had previously been involved in petty offending and might have been expected to go from bad to worse.

But a nine-month course which taught them to ride and care for horses has had dramatic results. The conduct of most has improved and one boy is aiming to become a jockey.

At 15,000, the project is a good deal cheaper than what it would cost to handle these kids if they went bad. And the fact that the money has been snatched back from criminals makes the scheme's success doubly sweet.