Edinburgh Tattoo: Castle to erect stands early for Olympic visit

SPECTATOR stands for the Edinburgh Military Tattoo are to be put in place seven weeks before this year’s festival season in time to herald the arrival of the Olympic torch in the city.

Despite the advent of a new £16 million arena – which was meant to reduce disruption from building work at the Castle Esplanade by 50 per cent – work on scaffolding towers will start on 16 April.

The new stands were supposed to mean work would not have to begin until early June each year, even allowing time for concerts which are usually staged in the run-up to the Tattoo by promoters Regular Music.

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However the city council, which helped pay for the new stands, and Historic Scotland, which is responsible for the Esplanade, agreed to help stage what is billed as a “spectacular evening celebration” of the Olympics on 13 June.

Details of the open-air event have been kept under wraps, although it is thought that around 8,500 free tickets will be given away within the next fortnight, with a high-profile musical act set to be part of the line-up.

The stands will then remain, but are expected to lie unused, for more than a month before Olly Murs and Noel Gallagher take to the stage on the Esplanade, for what are expected to be sell-out gigs.

However, the Tattoo has defended the move to have the stands in place for so long, insisting that they were always planned to accommodate special one-off events.

A spokesman for the Tattoo said: “The Olympics are a once-in-a-lifetime event taking place in London and there was an opportunity to hold a major event in Edinburgh. When the investment was made in the new stands it was made clear that they would be filling a major gap in the city’s entertainment venues infrastructure.”

However, Rosemary Mann, spokeswoman for the Edinburgh Old Town Association, said: “We were concerned at the time that there were not firm restrictions put in place for when these new stands could be put in place. We think it should only be during the Tattoo and for the week beforehand to accommodate one-off events.”

Both the council and the London 2012 organising committee said details of the event would not be announced until later this month. The new Tattoo arena, which was unveiled for the first time last year, replaced ageing infrastructure which dated back to the early 1970s.

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Work to build new foundations for the arena at the Esplanade began in December 2009, just weeks after planning permission was secured, with the city council stumping up £3m, the Scottish Government £1.5m and Scottish Enterprise providing the same.

The old arena used to take 22 weeks to erect and dismantle.

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