SIMON BAIN
Developer Scarborough Muir, which has spent 10 years cleaning up one of western Europe’s most contaminated industrial sites at Rosyth, can complete the job within a year with the incentive of a commercial waterfront development.
The joint venture of 30 years standing between Fife-based Muir Group and family-owned Scarborough has ploughed £10m of its own cash into the site, since starting work in July 2005 on the demolition of a nine-acre former naval fuel bunker at the heart of the huge 120-acre site.
Work slowed down after 2008, because of the drop in demand for recycled materials, then in 2010 Fife council’s local plan rejected a mixed use waterfront, zoning it for purely port-related employment despite local opposition.
Muir Group took a £4.5million writedown on the land value in 2012, then two years ago Scarborough Muir brought forward plans for a renewable energy park. It aimed to attract £500m of investment in offshore wind turbine manufacturing and servicing, powered by a waste-fuelled renewable energy plant, and create 3500 jobs.
But this week the council’s executive committee finally accepted that “it was appropriate to consider a broader range of mixed uses including leisure, retail, hotel, community, residential uses and amenity space that would complement the waterfront’s role as a European gateway for trade, commerce, and tourism”. It follows the designation of the Forth Bridge as a Unesco world heritage site, as well as the improvement in the economy. Although the employment target of 3500 has been maintained, there is understood to be potential for significantly more job creation.
William McAllister, Edinburgh-based director of Scarborough Muir, who has been piloting the project since 2004, commented: “We have never submitted a planning application, it has always been at the policy stage, and we are now going through our third planning review. Ever since the process started we have been making representations and working with Fife council, trying to convince them that it is so big that you cannot pigeon hole the entire site into a single employment use. This isn’t how sites are regenerated.”
He added: “You have to introduce not only employment but leisure and retail uses and residential uses, because the world has changed and people like to live, work and socialise in one area.”
The slowdown in the renewable energy sector had further influenced policymakers, Mr McAllister said. “We are pursuing a number of potential occupiers interested in setting up a facility there, but it is very much driven by whether or not they are successful in securing orders.”
It was hoped that half the site would attract manufacturing and office use, leaving the rest for housing on a scale “less than at Leith”, tourism-related leisure, and a retail ‘district centre’ rather than a large supermarket.
Mr McAllister said: “We have survived, and we have committed to completing the site remediation and the bunker demolition.... over the next six to 12 months. We have undertaken it rightly or wrongly entirely funding it ourselves with no public sector money, and the time is now right to take it forward with new thinking.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here