OLD ROYAL HIGH DEVELOPERS MAKE CASE
The wait is over.
Duddingston House Properties and Urbanist Hotels’ revised plans for a scaled-down luxury hotel on the old Royal High School site have now been validated and are available online (Ref. 17/0058/FUL).
That is to say, they were briefly available until the Council's ever-unreliable Planning Portal crashed at lunchtime.
They comprise an application for:
Change of Use, Alterations to + Restoration of Principal Former Royal High School Building/Pavilions (Original Thomas Hamilton-designed school buildings). Demolition of ancillary buildings including former Gymnasium Block/Lodge, New Build Development, New/Improved vehicular, service/pedestrian accessess. Landscaping/Parking/Public Realm + other works to create a world class Hotel of International Standing with associated Uses (Including publicly accessible bars(Public House) + Restaurants Class 3.
Spurtle has not quite finished reading the 163 documents which describe and support the application. However, a thumbnail summary is given below. Reaction and analysis will follow shortly.
The new proposals are for a ‘market-leading, world-class hotel’, with the main reception, food and drink areas in the old RHS building. Some 127 bedrooms would occupy new elements to the east and west of the Hamilton building, ‘designed in a complementary, but modern, architectural style safeguarding the setting of the key listed building, Calton Hill, and the wider city landscape …’.
As seen in the pre-application visualisations (Breaking news, 3.11.16), the western pavilion is substantially lower, and more set back, than that in the original plans rejected on 17 December 2015. Whilst acknowledging this response to concerns, the latest design statement remains bullish about the merits of the proposed accommodation blocks: ‘The dynamic form of the proposed bedroom wings in the original proposal was welcomed by many stakeholders as an innovative response to the specific site conditions presented by the Hamilton building and its Calton Hill setting’.
Proposed interventions to the principal internal spaces are described as:
beneficial, restoring the authenticity of the original design. In relation to the impact on the retained listed buildings, and their setting, the impact has been minimised further in the revised scheme and, in any case, would not be severely or significantly adverse.
Part of the application consists of a Heritage Statement. This identifies 29 Conservation Principles that should inform any development of the site, including 10 conservation benefits and 19 conservation guidelines. This ‘demonstrates the conservation-led approach to the proposed hotel project’.
The effect of the proposed development on the Outstanding Univeral Value of the World Heritage Site (including most views) would, concludes the Heritage Statement, be beneficial and enhanced.
Arts and culture
DHP, UH and operator Rosewood Hotels promise:
an exemplar programme of Arts and Culture activities and events that will become a defining and enlivening feature of the hotel. They will actively seek to work with Scottish Arts and Cultural organisations at local and national level, and encourage their participation and involvement in the development of future activities at the new hotel.
The money
A commercially confidential report available to the Council’s Planning Department (but not the public) concludes that 127 rooms and suites, plus conference/banqueting space, spa, bars and restaurants is the minimum to make the development commercially viable.
A report commissioned from Oxford Economics asserts that the hotel would deliver local, regional and national economic benefits. In the first eight years:
- 630 jobs directly or indirectly for the city
- 730 jobs for Scotland
- £9.9 million per annum tax revenues in Edinburgh
- Annual tax receipts of £11.6 million for Scotland
- £25.2m in increased GDP per annum for Edinburgh.
Nowhere else to match it in Edinburgh
DHP and UH’s consultants Colliers International say that they identified 20 alternative locations to the old Royal High School which could possibly have served as suitable top-end hotel locations. Of these, only St Andrew’s House was up to scratch, and there’s no prospect of that coming up for sale. There is no alternative to the old Royal High School, they say, and some 40 world-class hotel operators confirm that assessment.
What about the opposition?
Sections 2–4 of the Design Statement concentrate on finding fault with the alternative proposal for a music school on this site, which already has planning consent (17 August 2016).
The Developers' Statement rebuts ‘inaccurate’ statements made at the Development Management Subcommittee in December 2015.
These include claims made by the New Town and Broughton Community Council that the developers had not maintained dialogue at the planning application notification stage. They dismiss various objections by NTBCC as ‘subjective conjecture’ since NTBCC representatives allegedly did not refer to the developers’ supporting information, and describe others as ‘misleading’ or ‘incorrect’.
Swingeing criticism is also levelled at comments made on that occasion by Adam Wilkinson, Director of Edinburgh World Heritage (‘totally misleading’, ‘entirely incorrect’, ‘no justification’), and Marion Williams of the Cockburn Association (‘inaccurate and very misleading’, ‘unfounded’, lacking understanding, ‘completely incorrect’).
Scepticism about the developers’ public surveys, expressed by Carol Nimmo of the Regent, Royal, Carlton Terraces and Mews Association was ‘without justification’ and ‘completely incorrect’.
Planning officers did not present ‘a fair and balanced case for the applicants’.
How material these claims are, at this stage in an entirely separate planning application, we don't know. To Spurtle, they sound more relevant as a line of argument for deployment during the appeal hearing just over the horizon.
What next?
Any comments on the proposals can be made online here by 24 March. Amazingly, when we last looked this morning, there was already one objection.
Got a view? Tell us at spurtle@hotmail.co.uk or @theSpurtle or Facebook
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Will the new @oldRoyalHigh hotel proposals qualify as "not hideous enough to refuse?" http://bit.ly/2mmm0od cc @theSpurtle
Rob Davidson Is Edinburgh compelled to get angry about every modern building that is proposed or built in it? Must we always stick to rows of, rather dull, sandstone tenements?
Moon Kat Complementary???? Having destroyed the view of Calton Hill from Leith Walk & Leith St with ugly new buildings, the remaining view, not to mention this beautifully proportioned building should be protected. Music School proposal so much more appropriate.
Catherine Harkin No, and we have plenty of lovely modern buildings, but this is not one of them and the Music School proposal is far more exciting than another big ugly hotel......esp if BHS site in Princes St now going to be a hotel too?
Rhona Stewart Cameron Ha! i can still see that standing in a couple of hundred years - NOT. Get a grip Edinburgh.