Plans to turn an A-listed office block at a prime city centre site into a hotel have been unveiled.
It comes after the offices, designed by Basil Spence and Partners as the new head office of the Scottish Widows Fund and Life Assurance Society in 1962, were acquired in a joint venture.
The Point A hotel brand is owned and operated by a joint venture company comprising Tristan Capital Partners and Queensway Group.
READ MORE: City centre landmark sold to become budget hotel
It has secured investment of over £40m to fund both the recent building purchase and the cost of renovating and converting the building into a 206 bedroom Point A hotel.
As both owner and operator, the joint venture company will require to recruit a team of over 50 personnel to manage the day to day operation.
Point A, which has submitted proposals to the City of Edinburgh Council with Maith Design, said it will retain key features of the internal layout of the building.
READ MORE: Plans lodged for major new hotel in Scottish city centre landmark
“Already operating one Point A hotel in Edinburgh which sees high levels of guest occupancy and sustained high guest satisfaction with their experience, we are demonstrating our commitment to Edinburgh by opening our second hotel in the city in St Andrew Square,” the hotel company said.
“Since opening in the summer of 2019, our first Point A Edinburgh hotel has in just a short time been rated in the top third of all hotels in the city.
“It is worth noting that our staff satisfaction scores are some of the highest in the industry and we remain committed to training and development of our team in Edinburgh and across our hotels as an important part of our strategy.”
READ MORE: Scottish property mogul's plan for new city hotel backed
Point A, which has a hotel in Morrison Street in the city, also said: “The scope of the proposals looks to enhance the existing Grade A listed building.
“Externally the building will be retained and refurbished on the prominent elevations, with minor alterations to the Rose Street and Rose Street North Lane elevations.
“Due to the ongoing technical and structural investigations all stone cladding repairs shall be presented in separate applications to that of the main overall consents within this current application.
“Services installations have been considered to neutralise visual impact and structural alterations have been designed to minimise impact to internal alterations.”
The joint venture company currently owns and operates 10 Point A hotels, seven based in London, two in Scotland and one in Ireland.
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