Edinburgh Old Town: new row flares over blueprint

HERITAGE watchdogs and campaigners have expressed dismay after Edinburgh City Council refused to bow to demands to return a huge development in the city’s Old Town to the drawing board – despite claims it will damage the capital’s world heritage site.

Fears have been expressed that a massive gap site next to Waverley Station will become even bigger before detailed plans are approved for the Caltongate scheme.

It is thought the development will be carried out in stages, with office blocks only built once tenants have been lined up for the new “government quarter,” and the hotel development reliant on an operator signing up.

South African developers have been given the go-ahead to knock down 18 flats and two listed buildings to make way for a “five-star” hotel and conference centre, which will have an entrance on the Royal Mile.

The Scotsman revealed last week how a consortium of property firms had paid £7 million to take the gap site off the Canongate out of administration, and was planning to revive a scheme which appeared to have collapsed when a previous developer went under.

The council has rejected demands from Unesco to insist that major changes are made to a previous development on the grounds that it did not want the city to be saddled with an ugly gap site for years to come. However, residents are furious that the council has agreed to sell the various sites for £3.4m without knowing exactly what will be built on the vast site. The developers last week said that detailed proposals for the £300m development would be brought forward within the next few months, but added that the consortium would be “working within the existing planning consent”.

Euan Leitch, spokesman for the Architectural Heritage Society of Scotland, said: “The decision to sell public property to facilitate the potential implementation of the Caltongate masterplan is deeply disappointing.

“That Caltongate met with local and international opprobrium is a matter of record and councillors had an opportunity to rectify this. Unesco’s world heritage committee specifically urged improvements to the Caltongate development in 2009. We have seen no evidence of these improvements.”

Julie Logan, spokeswoman for the Save Our Old Town Campaign, said: “We are not against this whole development, but we do not want to see further demolitions, which will create an even bigger gap site in this area.

“We are not convinced at all that a five-star hotel is ever going to be built and we don’t think the council is either.

“While we don’t want to discourage development and improvements to the world heritage site, we expected the recommendations relating to changes needed, which came out of Unesco’s visit to Edinburgh, would have allowed a more responsible development to evolve.”

Planning convenor Jim Lowrie said: “A five-star hotel, with an address on the Royal Mile, is the really important part of the whole development. If we refuse to sell the land the whole site could lie moribund for years.”