A new £100 million hotel planned for the Scottish capital will bring 300 rooms for tourists and 250 jobs to the city.
To make way for the investment, a familiar building on the city’s most famous thoroughfare would be entirely demolished.
The façade of Princes Street in Edinburgh, the grand old avenue below the watchful castle, has been changing in recent years as the face of retail has changed.
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The department store bookends of Frasers and Jenners are repurposed and in the process of being so, in the case of Jenners with a hotel and retail offering, and much in-between is also undergoing transposition.
City Of Edinburgh Council has responded to new kinds of proposals being put forward for empty shops, mostly hotel and hospitality-led.
The Johnnie Walker experience in Frasers was a welcome £150 million investment from Diageo at a time when £1 billion-worth of attention was shifting towards the St James Quarter.
The Ruby Hotels development, across the former Next, Zara and Russell and Bromley stores, is expected to be the largest single investment on the street since the whisky tourist attraction opened in 2021.
The unlisted building that housed Next, an office and retail block dating from 1971, will be demolished, as “it is not considered to have a positive relationship with the street”.
So, the proposals “include the total demolition of the 1970s building - 107-108 Princes Street - together with the removal and replacement of structural elements in the historic structures - 104-106 Princes Street [B-listed] - which are no longer of historic interest or are considered structurally unsound”.
The former Zara store was an 1875-built hotel that was converted to retail in the 20th century, while the former Russell and Bromley store at 106 is a late 18th former townhouse, also changed to shops in the last century.
The plan from Hunter REIM and Ruby Hotels, along with architect 3D Reid, has been “subject to a significant public engagement”.
Investments in the Princes Street area total £550m, and include a £50m hotel plan for the former Debenhams, the £75m IMPACT Concert Hall, and the new £17m Gleneagles Townhouse.
READ MORE: Edinburgh Princes Street hotel plan unveiled
It is difficult to argue with the developer’s point that the unlisted building earmarked for demolition “is considered contrary to the significant architectural and historic characteristics that define the New Town and does not relate well to the adjoining buildings”.
There is always a preservation worry about what will be lost in the partial demolition of listed buildings, even if they have already been altered.
Deputy business editor Scott Wright returned from a European sojourn this week, which “offered respite from the grinding pressure” of UK inflation.
“Several days in Spain was all it took for the message to hit home that the rampant price increases which UK households have had to endure over the last year and more is not being uniformly felt on the continent.
“It is significantly cheaper for groceries and to eat in bars and restaurants in Spain,” he writes.
Generations have meandered from East Kilbride to the Auldhouse Arms and back of an evening. The distance between the South Lanarkshire village and the outer edge of EK has become less over the years.
Some no doubt will be keen to seek the details around the pub and restaurant, which business correspondent Kristy Dorsey reports dates back nearly 200 years and is for sale at offers in the region of £625,000.
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