After 40 years, Royal High School set to get new lease of life

STALLED plans to create a five-star hotel in an Edinburgh landmark that has lain empty for more than 40 years are set to be revived – three years after a design contest was launched to secure the future of the old Royal High School.

Developers beat off competition from more than 50 other firms to strike a deal with the council, which has confirmed a preferred operator is finally in place after a lengthy search.

An unnamed international operator is said to have chosen Edinburgh and Venice for its next two major projects in Europe, after close inspection of the landmark, famed for its Greek-style architecture.

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And it is hoped the first plans for the site – long touted as a home for the Scottish Parliament – will be brought forward to the city council and heritage bodies by the summer.

Gareth Hoskins, the architect who has won plaudits for his transformation of the old Royal Museum building in Edinburgh, will be designing the hotel, which is expected to have a bar-bistro, spa, health club, banqueting facilities and conference centre.

Duddingston House Properties, the Edinburgh-based developer responsible for the hotel project, insists the development it is working on will be far removed from the string of budget hotel schemes currently taking shape in the city centre.

However the Calton Hill scheme – which will be close to the existing Apex Hotel – could prove highly controversial as it is likely to include plans to create modern extensions into two car parks on either side of the main A-listed building.

Council leaders admit they are “disappointed” at the lack of progress over the building, which dates back to 1829, after the local authority finally killed off plans for a photography centre at the site in March, 2009.

However Bruce Hare, chief executive of Duddingston, who agreed a 125-year lease with the city council two years ago, said he was confident the plans being discussed with the “world-class” hotel operator were a viable proposition.

He said: “We’re in confidential discussions with a preferred operator at the moment. We can’t take forward any proposals to the council until an operator is fully in place, but I’d hope we’d be able to do that in the next couple of months.

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“We’ve had easily 20 operators from around the world looking at the site over the last couple of years, but it is a changed world since the design competition was held and real estate investment is just not there any more, so you really need hotel operators who can finance projects themselves.

“A five-star hotel has a number of requirements which we’re working on with the architects at the moment, but these are within the parameters of the original design brief.”

The old Royal High, which was designed by architect Thomas Hamilton, cost just £34,000 for the council to build, with work starting in 1825.

The city council had been using part of the complex for offices in recent years, but these have been vacated to help pave the way for a hotel development after Duddingston was selected to take the project forward two years ago.

Jim Lowrie, convener of the council’s planning committee, said: “We are a disappointed nothing has happened with this scheme by now, as we were hoping the work would actually be finished, but it is probably due to the situation with the economy.”

Soldiering on

LONG feted as one of Edinburgh’s finest buildings, the old Royal High School is one of several 19th-century landmarks which earned the capital the title of the Athens of the North.

After the school relocated to the Barnton area in 1968, the building was bought by the then Scottish Office with a view to it becoming home to the Scottish Parliament.

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Around £1 million was spent refurbishing it in the run-up to the 1979 devolution referendum, which saw hopes of a new parliament dashed.

In 1994 the building was bought back by the council to avoid it falling into private hands.

But then-First Minister Donald Dewar rejected the idea of the new parliament moving in there, in favour of a purpose-built complex at Holyrood.

Recent suggestions have included creating a museum of military memorabilia.