New proposals ring alarm bells
They’ve been a long time coming, but new plans for elements of the 2.4 ha New Town Quarter site between Dundas St and King George V Park have finally appeared.
Izar V Lux S. à r. L and Fusion Edinburgh Propco Ltd seek consent for 599 purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA) units, 315 residential homes and 1 ground-floor retail space. These plans replace earlier consented proposals for build-to-rent flats and office space as part of the overall New Town Quarter scheme. The developers say recent economic and political changes have made those original components unviable.
You can see the latest proposals (25/01899/FUL), which were validated on 5 June, here. You have until 4 July to read all 299 documents and register your support or objection to them here. The most intelliegible starting point we've found so far is the EIA Report – Non-Technical Summary.
Spurtle expects significant resistance to the proposal. The abrupt arrival of so many students would inevitably affect local infrastructure, stretch social resources, and disrupt community balance.
Many locals are also concerned about possible use of the PBSA as short-term lets during holidays or, more permanently, after some long-term collapse in the number of students seeking places at Edinburgh’s academic institutions.
From among those worried neighbours come demands that any new PBSA units in the New Town Quarter should be built in a way that allows for conversion to other residential uses.
The New Town & Broughton Community Council at its meeting on Monday evening undertook to work steadily through the plans before issuing a formal response. In the meantime, it is consulting with individuals, residents associations, heritage bodies and other stakeholders. We’ll report developments as we hear about them.
Misgivings
Spurtle has grave misgivings about so many students being concentrated in one location, and about the cumulative effect of such numbers when combined with other PBSA projects in Broughton and Leith Walk. Leith Central Community Council has recently – and usefully – grappled with such issues here.
However, we also understand that objections to students’ presence alone would not be enough to sway officials and elected members bound by strict planning criteria.
Informed observers we’ve spoken to are assembling more persuasively nuanced arguments and raising precisely argued concerns about the architectural design.
For those seeing its details for the first time, this planning application is still at a very early stage. Nobody can yet tell what will emerge from detailed scrutiny of the plans. There may be merits to it as well as causes for concern.
However, broadly speaking, the new proposals look like a comparatively hasty response to unfavourable market conditions.
They may make sense to alarmed developers, but for those who care about the long-term cohesion and quality of the New Town, and this prime spot within it, they seem not only like a threat but a potentially historic missed opportunity.
Got a view? Tell us at spurtle@hotmail.co.uk.
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I used to work there! Paid for a lot of my good drum gear. I think that there should be no student accommodation, because it's not adaptable; I also think that there should be tenements, with back greens and so on. There's the old stair out to the south - the exit (vomitorium, if you like) from the fairground / football ground (which should be kept), and there's also a road in from Eyre Place, so proper streets, houses and gardens could be laid out. It's a big site, so there's plenty of scope for inventiveness.—Derek Coghill, Murrayfield
