Wave of talent births surf resort

Last month saw the official opening of the Lost Shore Surf Resort at a former quarry in Ratho on the outskirts of Edinburgh. It’s an impressive and innovative facility that is set to become one of Scotland’s top visitor destinations.

The centrepiece of the site is the 160 metre-long Wavegarden-powered cove which offers a surfing experience ‘like no other’ by producing tailored waves, catering to highly experienced surfers as well as those who are completely new to the sport.

Lost Shore is only the second wave pool surf centre in the UK (the first opened in Bristol in 2019) and one of just nine in the world. Edinburgh’s £60m resort, with a wave pool three times the size of the Wembley football pitch, is also the largest of its kind in Europe.

Surfing lessons at the Lost Shore Surf Resort

Not only has Lost Shore created a surfing destination within the Central Belt, the 60-acre site also includes food outlets, luxury accommodation and an event space which will attract tourists from across the UK and beyond. Indeed, the facility’s owners are expecting to welcome around 160,000 visitors each year, forecast to contribute over £11m to the local economy.

Lost Shore is a world-class facility with strong potential to deliver major benefits in terms of sport, tourism, and business. I was delighted to be the leader of the team handling all aspects of legal support required to bring this unique project to fruition.

A project of this magnitude required a broad spectrum of legal advice and support to deliver a successful outcome. This included advising on corporate matters such as structuring, banking and finance, commercial real estate issues, including leasing, significant local and international contract issues and environmental and sustainability compliance. It was an opportunity to showcase the strength and flexibility of Scottish law firms.

While the extensive and multi-layered legal brief for the resort’s developer was handled by a team of colleagues, our work actually began eight years earlier when I became part of the project’s development team. This involved initial strategic business planning to help identify and mitigate any serious issues with the various complex and intersecting contracts required to deliver this facility.

Our team was then structured to ensure we were able to meet and communicate whenever required to enable coordination on all specific project needs and readily provide advice from our appropriate specialist team members without any overlap.

Along with the ongoing provision of general strategic project advice, the team also managed all legal aspects around planning, construction, data protection and consumer contracts. This far-reaching support underlined how a mid-sized Scottish firm, with both the depth and expertise to respond to ever-changing requirements, can add tremendous value to an innovative project such as this.

This was not an ordinary reactive legal engagement providing advice to specific client questions but an organic, connected relationship with our developer client. This was coupled with our usual proactive approach to creating the best route in finding solutions to particular challenges, which were common in a project of this size and scale, or proposing the most practical options to overcome potential obstacles.

Scotland is set to ride a wave of economic benefits through the increased tourism and wider business uplift that will follow from the creation of this iconic surfing resort. Lost Shore Surf Resort has also shone a spotlight on the quality and value which Scottish law firms are capable of delivering for clients with a challenging and varied brief.

Laura Tainsh is a Partner, Davidson Chalmers Stewart​