The controversial old Royal High School hotel plan has been recommended for rejection by planners.
Edinburgh City Council said the famous derelict neoclassical Thomas Hamilton building is under conditional lease to the Urbanist team in a £75 million plan to convert the A-Listed architectural masterpiece into a hotel with "Inca style" terraces.
But planning officials have now recommended the council steps back from the deal that was hailed as the answer to its high upkeep because of the crumbling condition of the buildings.
The hotel plans - the new foyer is portrayed below - were challenged by Unesco, which has the right to remove the city's World Heritage Site status.
Unesco advisers called for an investigation into how plans including the old Royal High hotel are affecting the heritage value of the Scottish capital.
Then the city's St Mary’s Music School put in a separate bid to be rehoused in the Calton Hill landmark.
William Gray Muir, chairman of the trust formed to push the new project, put forward plans for a concert hall in the main building.
The music school proposals, funded by the philanthropic Dunard Fund, are for the creation of three new public performance spaces, including a 300-seat concert hall in the former debating chamber that was once earmarked as the new Scottish Parliament.
However, the hotel developer said more than half of 580 visitors to an exhibition at the site completed a questionnaire and 79 per cent of them were "generally in favour of the redevelopment proposals", with over 75 per cent agreeing that a world-class hotel would be an appropriate use for the well-known Edinburgh landmark.
Urbanist and Duddington's plans for a six-star hotel would save Hamilton's building, it was claimed.
When operational the hotel could create 640 local jobs and contribute on average £27 million annually to the local economy.
Mr Gray Muir, chairman of the Royal High School Preservation Trust, which earlier released its plan, below, said that building should "return to its rightful position at the cultural heart of Edinburgh".
A spokesman for the developer said that "the team are studying the report in detail and will issue a response in due course".
Planners said: “The development would cause permanent and irreversible damage.
“The adverse impacts on the character and setting of listed buildings, the New Town Conservation Area, the designed landscape of Calton Hill and the Outstanding Universal Value of the World Heritage Site would not be mitigated by the sophisticated design of the proposed extensions.
“Put simply, too much building is being proposed for this highly sensitive site."
The report added: "The benefits to the city's economy and to tourism through bringing an at risk building back into a sustainable long term use are not outweighed by the very significant harm to built heritage and landscape of the city.
"In coming to this conclusion, regard has been had to the exceptional architectural and historic interest of the Royal High School and the quality of its surrounding environment.
A spokesman said: “Councillors will consider officers’ recommendations at committee next Thursday, December 17.”
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 hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel