UNESCO SLAMS CALTONGATE, and DEMANDS CHANGES! *

*This blog has been updated to link to the UNESCO mission reports, Bath and Edinburgh, now that they are released:

http://www.culture.gov.uk/ukwhportal/publications/publications.htm


The Canongate Venture, one of the World Heritage Site listed buildings the Caltongate scheme would have had demolished

What a cheering heading that was to write.

The Scotsman today has leaked part of the still-confidential report on Edinburgh from the UNESCO mission which visited the city last November, sparked by a huge campaign by many worried about what was happening in the City. I leave The Scotsman (and mostly Brian Ferguson) to tell the story...

UNESCO insist that views be kept, and this planned building scrapped

Unesco insists Capital must scrap £300m Caltongate scheme

6 June 2009
By BRIAN FERGUSON

A £300 MILLION development in Edinburgh's historic Old Town has been thrown deeper into chaos after Unesco inspectors demanded council leaders have the whole scheme returned to the drawing board.

Councillors are set to face international condemnation at a world heritage summit in Seville next month after a damning report urged wholescale changes be made to the Caltongate scheme – even though it has received final approval from the Scottish Government.

The future of the project – which includes a five-star hotel and conference centre on the Royal Mile, more than 200 homes and a cultural quarter – was put in doubt this year when developer Mountgrange went into administration.Leaked documents obtained by The Scotsman reveal that heritage inspectors are demanding a reprieve for two listed buildings threatened with demolition, the scrapping of a modern building which would have blocked views from Jeffrey Street, and a full review of how the development would impact on views from Calton Hill.

Unesco's report, which the city council received in February, said changes were needed to avoid the development impacting on the "outstanding universal value, authenticity and integrity" of the city's world heritage site...

...Referring to Caltongate, Unesco's inspectors recommended the "integration rather than demolition of two listed buildings" and the "total redesign" of a huge part of the development. Unesco's report will also recommend the creation of a "buffer zone" around the current world heritage site. The report also states: "There is a need for clear policies in relation to height controls within the world heritage property ... which should be developed on the basis of key views and vistas from within and outside the property."

Here's the report from the Scotsman:

http://news.scotsman.com/caltongatedevelopment/Unesco-insists-Capital-must-scrap.5340925.jp#4101203

It's been a long, long struggle, a very real David and Goliath battle, but there seems to be a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.

For more keep up with the blog:

http://independentrepublicofthecanongate.blogspot.com/

and website of the campaign:

http://www.eh8.org.uk/

Last week another section of the report was released, at the inquiry into the 17-storey Haymarket Tower. UNESCO didn't like that either, and thought planning policies and a lack of a declared buffer zone were 'cause for concern'.

The plans were originally backed by Edinburgh City Council but were "called in" by the Scottish Government, although possibly that was because of the UNESCO visit...

Heritage body hits out over visual impact of 17-storey capital hotel
27 May 2009
By SHÂN ROSS

WORLD heritage body Unesco has strongly criticised plans for a 17-storey Edinburgh hotel, saying it would have a "major visual impact" on surrounding buildings in the capital.
A public inquiry into the £200 million project heard that the UN body had "considerable concern about the height of the proposed hotel in the Haymarket development".

A two-week public inquiry into the project at the disused Morrison Street goods yard near Haymarket railway station which includes two hotels, offices shops and restaurants, began on Monday.Critics, including the Cockburn Association, Edinburgh World Heritage and residents' groups, say they do not object to the site being redeveloped, but insist the height of the 17-storey, five-star hotel, located at the edge of a World Heritage Site, is out of scale with buildings in the surrounding area.The plans were originally backed by Edinburgh City Council but were "called in" by the Scottish Government...

Unesco officials visited the city on a monitoring mission last November, raising fears that the city would lose its heritage status.In its report to be presented to the World Heritage Committee meeting in Seville next month and released to the inquiry yesterday, they raise strong concerns about the hotel which Tiger Developments wants to build for its client the InterContinental Hotel Group.

Unesco wrote: "The proposed 17-storey hotel would have a major visual impact on the property and dominate the St Mary's Cathedral towers from several key viewpoints."The officials also said there was a need for a "declared buffer zone" between the proposed development and the heritage site, adding that current planning mechanisms seemed unable to deter proposals such as that for a 17-storey hotel....

More:

http://news.scotsman.com/edinburghplanningissues/Heritage-body-hits-out-over.5304417.jp

Hotel would 'obliterate' city's heritage status, says expert
3rd June 2009
By BRIAN FERGUSON

ONE of the world's foremost conservation experts believes plans for a controversial hotel development "ignore and obliterate" the world heritage status of Scotland's capital.
Professor Herb Stovel, a long-time adviser to world heritage body Unesco, told a public inquiry in Edinburgh that the 17-storey development would dramatically change the city's Haymarket district.Prof Stovel, who was behind a major study which led to Edinburgh securing world heritage status, said it made no difference that the five-star hotel proposed by Irish developer Tiger was outside the designated site...

More:

http://news.scotsman.com/edinburghplanningissues/Hotel-would-39obliterate39-city39s-heritage.5327538.jp


Swinney admits planning system has failings
4 June 2009
By BRIAN FERGUSON

SCOTTISH finance secretary John Swinney yesterday admitted that having to call in major developments for public inquiries meant the planning system was partly failing. He said the government wanted to "minimise" the use of inquiries by trying to ensure disputes were resolved early.

Mr Swinney also insisted the government would respect the views of Unesco's world's heritage committee when it rules on major developments in Edinburgh next month – saying the body had a "fundamental" part to play in the planning process. He was speaking in amid news a second public inquiry had been ordered within just a few months into a major development in Edinburgh.

Meanwhile, the head of the Prince of Wales' architecture trust has called for developers to respect the character of world heritage sites such as Edinburgh when pursuing major projects. Hank Dittmar said the prince had expressed concerns about the impact of new schemes in the city.

http://news.scotsman.com/politics/Swinney-admits-planning-system-has.5332724.jp#4096034

Haymarket Tower

I understand the good people at Bath Heritage Watchdog are eagerly anticipating what UNESCO has to say about that fine city, and the Western Riverside scheme.
http://www.bathwesternriverside.co.uk/
http://www.bathheritagewatchdog.org/

Nem

World Heritage - who cares?

A small section of the SAVE exhibition, snapped at the preview by Nem

Liverpool (a World Heritage Site) featured in this blog a week ago, with news and a report of a SAVE exhibition and book:

http://nemesisrepublic.blogspot.com/2009/02/damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-dont.html

and on Feb 12th here:

http://nemesisrepublic.blogspot.com/2009/02/saving-britains-heritage.html

and I am delighted to report that in today's Independent there is an excellent review of the SAVE exhibition:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/reviews/triumph-disaster-and-decay-milkandsugar-liverpool-1630252.html

Liverpool’s agony has also been an internal one, witnessed by residents and visitors alike, in the unceasing destruction of its architectural heritage. A bomb-site necropolis long after the Luftwaffe had visited, the city began an extraordinary programme of self-mutilation, starting with the demolition of John Foster’s magnificent Customs House in 1947,

http://conservationofficer.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html

despite the fact that its war damage was quite repairable. This story of a disappearing city, which continues to the present day, is chronicled in a superb exhibition of photographs, Triumph, Disaster and Decay, at the milkandsugar gallery....

...Individual records of philistinism and neglect unfold across the gallery walls. Of the 19 churches in Everton described by Nikolaus Pevsner in 1969, only six remain. A photograph of Abercromby Square shows Foster’s church St Catherine’s, demolished in 1966 to make way for the university’s Senate House. More heartbreaking still is the fragment of wrought ironwork from a gallery inside the Old Sailors’ Home, a beautiful neo-Jacobean marvel senselessly destroyed in the 1970s. Canning Place, where it stood, itself no longer exists, swallowed up by the huge (and controversial) Paradise Street shopping centre, Liverpool One. It echoes another outrageous scarring, of elegant old Clayton Square, flattened to make way for another mall in 1986. By whose decree? The answer isn’t always clear, but a combination of rapacious property developers and incompetent councillors have usually done for it.

That legacy of near-criminal negligence seems to have been handed down through the DNA of Liverpool City Council. One might leave this exhibition feeling indignant and deeply depressed, for the disasters of the 1960s are returning, in the shape of the Government-sponsored Pathfinder schemes. Hearteningly, campaigns are being fought against further depredations. Elizabeth Pascoe still battles a road-widening scheme that would destroy 400 perfectly good family houses in and around Edge Lane. Florence Gersten also continues a valiant rearguard against municipal vandalism, having helped to save the Lyceum building in Bold Street back in the 1980s. Save Britain’s Heritage itself deserves immense credit for supporting the fightback, and for mounting this exhibition, splendidly curated by Robert Hradsky...

Caltongate in Edinburgh as a place does not of course exist, apart from in the mind of whichever PR drone thought it up as the adspeak new face of ruining a World Heritage Site (see yesterday's blog and the movie The Canongate Project as well as http://www.eh8.org.uk/ and the related blog, linked to from this site). Currently, it is still a hole in the ground in Edinburgh, following the demolition of a bus garage. Under threat of demolition are listed buildings, with facade schemes for others, and the sale of 'common good' land, a peculiarly Scottish concept, for buildings whose future planned contribution to the 'common good' is baffling many. The council seem to think that selling off these public assets to a private developer for pennies in order to hugely enlarge the development site was sound sense. That says a great deal about the council.

Of course, mega businesses have megabucks to spend on selling their schemes to gullible (or worse) councillors and naturally they have the cash to spend on PR agencies to help overcome any little local difficulties and carefully manipulate the entire process. And indeed Mountgrange was able to take advantage of a spin company called Invicta PA, whose blurb on its website carries with it a sickbag warning before you read it:

http://www.invictapa.co.uk/casestudy_mountgrange.pdf

A little past history is worth reading:

http://www.eh8.org.uk/pps_in_the_news

'Organised and determined' campaign group - militant? Dear me yes! Armed to the teeth with only a love of their community and city and the concept of Word Heritage, into battle they went.

Oddly, many more of the citizens of Edinburgh were not too happy about having thrust upon them yet another crappy scheme of second rate architecture, the city has had too many of those in recent times, with little heed taken of objectors (the planning 'consultations' by the developer Mountgrange carefully avoided taking much note of objections from local residents, Edinburgh World Heritage, ICOMOS, etc). So they joined in the protests, and when local politicians aided by Historic Scotland (whose role in this affair has surely yet to be fully explored and exposed) passed the plans and the Scottish government scandalously declined to call them in for public inquiry, they took their protests to UNESCO, a body to which the UK is a state party and signatory to the World Heritage Convention. UNESCO duly sent a mission to investigate matters.

The mission arrived last November. It first visited Bath, then Edinburgh. The council wined dined and generally schmoozed the two delegates, presumably in the hope that a full belly and copious amounts of alcohol would blur their vision and make them see the Emperor's magnificent suit of spankingly new attire. Such profligacy with cash seems not to have had the desired outcome however, as a draft of the (confidential) report was apparently sent to the council, Historic Scotland and the government last week. Confidentially too no doubt, but apparently forgetting to say so, the Convenor of the Planning Committee 'Sunny' Jim Lowrie (see him in action here:)


managed to spill a few beans to a Scotsman journalist, who felt duty bound to allow the wider public to know that UNESCO seems to not have been entirely delighted by the scheme, and is waiting for the culprits to come clean about what on earth they were playing at.

http://www.eh8.org.uk/unesco_saltes_caltongate_the_scotsman_17_feb_09

It should also be pointed out that 'Sunny' Jim is on the Board of Edinburgh World Heritage Trust (a registered charity); quite how he squares that role with his desire to vote through anything and everything which EWH seems to feel not appropriate for the city is possibly a puzzle to many. Let's see how he votes when the plans for the St James' Centre redevelopment come before his planning committee. Heritage and other bodies have all objected, but naturally the council planners have recommended passing the plans.

Latest critical comment is Wilson's Weekly Wrap, on the Architecture Scotland website today:

http://www.architecturescotland.co.uk/news/1250/Wilson%27s_Weekly_Wrap%3A_You_and_me_and_rain_on_the_roof%2C_The_best_is_yet_to_come_%26_Trumped.html

Given that Mountgrange (one of its Directors serves as a commissioner for English Heritage) seems to have (allegedly) gone financially tits up, and rumoured as trying to get cash to keep the sinking Caltongate afloat from that rock of the finance world the Royal Bank of Scotland, I cannot think many will shed a tear really for its demise.

As Mr Wilson says: Time then for a proper (i.e. not developer-led) appraisal of what this site really needs and what this part of the Old Town can actually absorb. In other European cities such a study would form the basis for an international design competition: here we can only dream of such things.

Meanwhile, Edinburgh City Council apparently has cash in trust to 'temporarily' landscape the site until such time as something can be done permanently. No doubt it will be rushing to spend it. Possibly it can look at the buildings standing empty also, and consider re-letting those.

Edinburgh World Heritage Trust continues its good work in the teeth of such problems, and news from its website is that a Conservation Plan has now been drwan up for Riddle's Court, also in the Old Town:

http://www.ewht.org.uk/Riddles-Court-secrets-revealed.aspx

The conservation statement prepared by consultant Andrew Wright brings together for the first time a combination of archival sources along with a detailed site inspection. His research throws a new light on many aspects of the building.

There is some archival evidence that the lime harling of the exterior walls had at one time been a startling yellow with window margins tinted a pinkish red, some of which still survives on site.

Of particular interest is a stone hood on the south wall of the inner court, considered to be a rare survival from a hoist, suggesting that the upper storey was used as a merchant’s warehouse.

Additionally, a fresh appeal for funds has been launched in order to complete the excellent conservation work at Well Court:

http://www.ewht.org.uk/Well-Court---the-finishing-touch.aspx

See also the Related Links section at the bottom right of that page for more.

It's not all bad news!


Nem