Edinburgh moves out
James Cusick reports on the pros and cons of Scotland's 'Canary Wharf'
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Your support makes all the difference.EDINBURGH is building its own Canary Wharf, five miles west of the city centre. More than two million square feet of offices, about half the size of Olympia and York's London Docklands development, are to be constructed on a 138-acre site called Edinburgh Park.
Nearly 230 years after the Scottish capital built its first New Town district, the multi-million- pound project threatens to change the character of the Georgian original. Lawyers, accountants, fund management companies and insurance firms, the heart of Edinburgh's business community, expanded in the 1970s and 1980s, squeezed into buildings designed by Robert Adam and James Craig. However, the lure of Corinthian porticos and Craigleith stone has disappeared for the larger firms trapped in the city centre. The removal men have already called at Charlotte Square and are booked for St Andrew's Square as the financial district prepares to move out of town.
'It is potentially disastrous,' said Oliver Barratt, secretary of the Cockburn Association, which campaigns to preserve and improve the city. 'We may no longer have the interplay of people in the centre.'
Formed in 1875, the association has kept a watchful eye on companies based in the New Town as they knocked together once-elegant houses, concreted over gardens for car parks, and ran computer and telecommunications wiring through ceilings and floors. The association may now be monitoring the return of the New Town to residential use, accompanied by a probable fall in house prices as firms desert the centre.
The New Town was laid out by James Craig in 1766, following the design of the 17th-century French town of Richelieu. Two squares at either end of a geometric street pattern, Charlotte Square and St Andrew's Square, represented the equal partnership of Scotland and England united under one crown, and recently in one parliamentary union. Edinburgh had escaped from the confines of a medieval cramped city.
The Royal Bank of Scotland, which owned and leased buildings all over Edinburgh city centre, has made good its own escape. It now has only the Dundas Mansion in St Andrew's Square, a building which is kept to maintain the bank's public profile. The main operational headquarters is on the edge of Edinburgh Park. At 220,000 sq ft it is currently Edinburgh's biggest building.
The Bank of Scotland's relatively small Mound headquarters is now supplemented by a money- processing complex, also on the edge of Edinburgh Park at South Gyle. Standard Life, which has premises all over Edinburgh, has opted for a 250,000 sq ft new building near the site for a new conference centre.
Where Olympia and York opted to build first at Canary Wharf, find customers later, and worry about infrastructure later still, Edinburgh Park is doing things the other way round. The South Gyle site is near the city bypass, a possible extension of the M8 motorway, a railway line into the city centre, and an airport only five minutes' drive away.
Two years ago, the City of Edinburgh went into 50-50 partnership with the private Miller Group to form a development company, New Edinburgh. The American modernist architect Richard Meier was brought in to design a planning pattern that other architects must work within.
Scottish Equitable is another major company to choose Edinburgh Park, even though it had only recently completed the refurbishment of its main St Andrew's Square offices. Its property manager, Mike Jackson, said: 'In 1985 we had 350 staff in Edinburgh. We've now got 1,200.' The prospect of further expansion meant a radical solution. 'We were almost instantly looking for space and couldn't find it in the centre. We took the decision to try to house everyone under one roof.' The solution was what will become Edinburgh's biggest building.
'The New Town is fine as a business district, but not for large staff users. There are now limits on what you can do there,' said Mr Jackson.
Alan Robertson of Jones Lang Wootton, marketing agents for Edinburgh Park, said: 'In the past, Edinburgh hasn't been able to compete with the South-east and the rest of Europe. That will now change.'
(Photograph omitted)
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