Who are the movers and shakers behind Edinburgh’s rebirth? Ian Fraser finds out
The new Scottish parliament has sparked off an uncharacteristic frenzy of speculative development in Edinburgh’s property sector. Already heating up before September 1997’s referendum result, the capital’s property market was pushed into overdrive once the parliament became a certainty.
Whole tracts of Edinburgh – notably the former industrial wasteland around Holyrood palace, the Exchange financial district and the Edinburgh Park business district – are currently being dug up and rebuilt. A surge of new office, hotel, restaurant and residential developments will ultimately transform the city. But who are the entrepreneurs behind this urban change? And who will be its main beneficiaries?
Two of the most unsuspecting are perhaps Ken Ross and Ken Tough, directors of the Glasgow-based property developers Elphinstone Homes. They had been planning to build a new hotel and 36 apartments in the run-down Holyrood district – and acquired the necessary site with planning permission from a charitable trust originally established by Scottish & Newscastle.
That was a full year before Donald Dewar’s surprise announcement that Holyrood was his preferred site for the new parliament building.
“There’s no doubt that it was a lucky bounce of the ball,” remarked Ken Tough, a director of Elphinstone. “My own money would have been on Calton Hill as the site of the parliament, so the decision to put it in Holyrood was a big win for us.”
Overnight, Elphinstone’s 32 flats and four penthouses had become attractive pied terres for prospective MSPs, political hangers-on and investors seeking rental income. Thirty five flats have already been sold for an average price of around £130,000, and only one flat remains unsold – a two-bedroom, £235,000 penthouse.
Elphinstone has also set up Holyrood Hotels to develop a £12 million hotel adjacent to its Park Gate block of flats. Tough says this 157-bed seven-storey hotel was “upgraded from three and a half stars to five stars” once it was clear that the parliament would be next door.
Stephen McBrierty, director of construction and development at Morrison Construction, is another leading light behind Edinburgh’s architectural rebirth.
“The amount of activity in Edinburgh at the moment is unparalleled. The new parliament has been a significant influencing factor,” said McBrierty.
Morrison, 43.5% owned by Sir Fraser Morrison and his brother Gordon, is involved in dozens of projects in Edinburgh – either as developer, construction company or facilities manager.
One of the largest is Exchange Crescent, a 100,000 sq ft office block that is under construction in Edinburgh’s new financial district, west of Lothian Road. Built in partnership with Cala, this as yet uncompleted building has already been sold for approximately £25m to the life company Standard Life.
More controversially, Morrison is a partner in the PFI consortium that won the £180m contract to build and manage the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
“We are part of a PFI bid that will do three things,” said McBrierty. “Build the new hospital, provide a facilities management service for the hospital, and redevelop existing sites. We look on PFI as something that’s here to stay. Time and again it demonstrates that it provides the best value for money for large public sector projects.”
The most evangelical developer behind Edinburgh’s current renaissance, however, is Ian Wall, head of property and development at Economic Development Investment (EDI) Group, the city council’s own development business.
Wall was born in Coventry and has worked for various local authorities including Sunderland, Durham, Manchester and Hackney. He has in the past been spotted selling copies of Socialist Worker on Saturdays.
Having arrived in Edinburgh in 1985, Wall has no desire to steal the limelight of Bill Ross, Edinburgh City Council’s former head of economic development and estates. Ross, who died three years ago, played a catalytic role in the current transformation of Edinburgh.
“It will be several years before the full strength of his legacy will become fully apparent,” said Wall. Ross was, for example, instrumental in getting the the £30m Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC) off the ground.
Wall, however, deserves much of the credit for Edinburgh Park, the new business district to the west of the city. In 1984, the council started buying land which at the time still formed part of the green belt to put together a site for the park. It is with great pride that Wall reels off the list of blue chip companies that have built headquarters there: Scottish Equitable, HSBC, Diageo, Oracle, Adobe Systems, British Energy, FI, Kingston-SCL and ICL.
“Where would these companies have gone if the park had not been available? I don’t think they would have come to Edinburgh at all,” said Wall.
He adds that 3,500 people already work on the Park and predicts this will rise to 5,000 by the end of the year.
Wall’s next challenge is the redevelopment of Princes Street, where he is behind a grandiose scheme to introduce a lower level “gallery” that would provide additional retail space, weather-proof access to existing shops, cafes, toilets, and baby changing facilities.
“The galleries will bring variety and choice back to Princes Street,” he said. If the £100m Princes Street Galleries scheme gets the go-ahead at a public hearing to be held in September, it would cement Wall’s position as the true eminence grise behind the new Edinburgh.
Copyright SMG Sunday Newspapers Ltd 1999
This article was published in the Sunday Herald on 9 May 1999