Developers defy Napier’s Craighouse campus protests

DEVELOPERS have set themselves on a collision course with campaigners by refusing to scale back plans for 116 new homes in the grounds of a historic university campus in Edinburgh.

New plans for Edinburgh Napier’s Craighouse site, sold off for around £10m, show how the lush grounds near Morningside will be transformed by dozens of luxury homes, apartments & mews houses.

The scheme for the 60-acre site is being opposed by a campaign group which wants to see the campus site protected as a green space, claiming it is a popular local beauty spot.

Two large swathes of open space on the site will be developed to make way for large blocks of development, one close to the New Craig buildings, and another on the south side one of the site, which offers spectacular views across the city.

The developers claim their plans for the entire campus, which the university bought from the NHS less than 20 years ago, are not financially viable unless the new homes are built.

However the number of these on the site has gone up since an original consultation on a masterplan last year, from 110 to 116, despite campaigners collecting more than 4000 protest signatures against the scheme.

And the developers, who include key figures involved in the doomed Caltongate scheme in the Old Town, have revealed the number of homes being created in listed buildings around the site has dropped from 90 to just 66 following talks with planners and Historic Scotland.

Only six months ago the developers had insisted the number of new build homes and those in converted listed buildings would be “split evenly.”

The most historic building on the site, the Old Craig mansion house, which dates back to the 16th century, will be redeveloped into just one luxury property.

However they have insisted that full public access to the site - previously home to a 19th century asylum - will be maintained and have offered to let locals run part of the “declining, undermanaged” grounds as a nature reserve.

It emerged in September 2010 that the university had decided to dispose of the site, which it had only bought up in 2004. The site had been an asylum for Scotland’s mentally disturbed aristocracy in the late 1890s - paying up to £1000 a year for treatment there.

William Gray Muir, director of Sundial Properties, which is pursuing the “Craighouse Partnership” project along with investment firm Mountgrange and the university, said the finance was in place to allow work to begin within the next 12 months, but raised concerns that the condition of the listed buildings could slip into long-term decline.

“Some of them that were vacated last year are already suffering from dry rot. Others could go into rapid decline. We have reduced the number of units in them on the advice of the planners and Historic Scotland.

“We believe this is one of the best development sites anywhere in Edinburgh, but there is absolutely no point in taking forward a scheme that is not viable. We have decided to go for the best possible quality of housing in the grounds rather than the lowest common denominator.”

The Friends of Craighouse Grounds and Wood group, which has been at loggerheads with the developers since a sell-off was announced last year, said development in the grounds would flout the council’s own planning rules for the site.

Spokeswoman Rosy Barnes said: “Serious questions should be asked about why this highly protected site – including a nature reserve – has been sold to this development consortium. Excessive new-build on this highly protected landscape would put the rest of Edinburgh’s green spaces at risk.”

A statement from the university admitted it had a “financial interest” in the development, but said it had decided it would be wrong not to simply sell the site on and “walk away.”

The statement added: “The sale went through a robust competitive tender process and, as with many such transactions, the details are commercially sensitive.

The university retains a financial interest in the site and is a joint partner in the planning application process. Because of this we are a named partner in the Craighouse Partnership.

“We have always been a careful owner of the site, mindful of its heritage and popularity with the local community, and are confident that we can fulfil this custodian role for the long term good of the site and the wider community.”

However Jean Thomson, chair of Morningside Community Council, said: “Our main concern is the impact on the local environment of all these new homes. This is a precious open space at the moment.”