Amost before the paint has dried on their new student accommodation at 7 Shrub Place, Ziggurat (Shrubhill) LLP have applied for planning permission to extend and reconfigure it (Ref. 16/00191/FUL).
The changes would add 38 student beds to the 260 already in place.
This long-envisaged second-phase proposal involves extending the existing building at its north-west end, continuing the current design, massing and materials, and forming five 6-bedroom flats (see before and 'after' below').
Another eight studio flats would come from converting parts of the original new-build, in places using Velux windows in roofspaces.
Why here, why now?
Ziggurat’s proposal is to some extent a hard-headed response to changes in the local planning context.
To the rear, there had originally been a proposal for a major pedestrianised route running roughly parallel to Leith Walk from Middlefield via a new ‘City Square’ and then behind new buildings by a different developer on the site of the old bus depot.
Those plans stalled in the economic downturn, and the proposed pedestrian thoroughfare looks likely to be dropped as neighbouring developers pursue more rewarding alternatives.
Hence, the business case for further commercial premises adjacent to those below the existing accommodation (see red boards above) now looks a lot less attractive. From Ziggurat's perspective, then, building additional student flats at 'ground-floor' level (in fact a little higher) makes better financial sense.
More students
As part of a Planning Statement for Ziggurat, consultants GVA James Barr look at whether the plan would contravene the Council’s Student Housing Guidance of August 2010, which aims to prevent an excessive concentration of such purpose-built accommodation in any one locality.
They assert that:
within the application site datazone and the locality comprising the two adjacent datazones, the total proposed student population as a percentage of the overall total population is under the 30% threshold as defined by CEC Student Housing Guidance (August 2010). […] With the addition of 38 student beds, the percentage of students in the datazone of the site would be 23.45%. Given the site lies adjacent to 2 other datazones, the average percentage of students across the 3 datazones would be 19.87%. As this is below 30%, the addition of 38 bedrooms would not result in an excessive concentration of students.
They further claim that Ziggurat’s scheme would be even more acceptable under a revised threshold of 40 per cent which they expect to be approved by the Council next month following consultation in November 2015 (see Breaking news, 31.3.10; Issue 247, p.2).
Conclusions
Ziggurat end their design statement as follows:
The proposal presented is a logical solution to a site that has evolved considerably since the original student scheme was approved.
The extension is a traditional in form [sic] that, now completed in phase 1, works really well within the Leith Walk street and wider city scape.
The conversions are the logical use of space, adding rooms without additional physical mass, surely the greenest of solutions.
This is, of course, a cheery gloss on issues about which not all locals will feel so well disposed.
With over 500 'Ziggurat students' alone within a kiss and a promise of each other on this stretch of Leith Walk, some may dispute the cosy consensus between Council and developers over what constitutes an 'excessive concentration', and how such concentrations should be measured. Others may bewail a lost opportunity to build much-needed affordable housing.
Spurtle has some sympathy with both these reservations, but nevertheless, so far as we can judge from a brief perusal of the plans, Ziggurat have come up with a useful and pragmatic adjustment to match market conditions on this site. Our initial view is that it may not improve the situation much for locals and would-be locals, but neither will it worsen matters much.
We'll gather opinions over the next few weeks and report back.
Got a view? Tell us at spurtle@hotmail.co.uk and @theSpurtle and Facebook
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Ady Gaham judging by the mistakes made at pavement level . . can they sort the pavement first before extending into the roof !
Michael Traill Its a good thing. The reality is people who develop social housing weren't to put their cash on the table. Id rather have student accommodation that the terrible mess it sat in previously for a number of years.
Roberta Buchan Michael Traill I take your point about an improvement on waste ground - but social housing is urgently needed so surely it would be better to press the government to address this and use the space in a balanced way? Also there is more and more student accommodation being built in quite close range so it risks becoming too dense and adversely impacting the neighbourhood in several ways.
