Edinburgh's old Royal High School building: Music school promoter's attack on hotel developers does him no favours – John McLellan

If it feels like time has stood still during the pandemic, there is certainly a sense of déjà vu at yet another row brewing over the future of the old Royal High School.

The former Royal High School building. Does the council want it to be a hotel, a music school or something else? (Picture: Steven Scott Taylor)

Urbanist hotels chief David Orr has confirmed the dream of bringing six-star hotel operator Rosewood to Edinburgh is now dead, or at least to the historic but crumbling Calton Hill site, and this week he wrote to councillors to ask for the chance to turn it into a smaller five-star boutique hotel which would still have public access.

Urbanist and development partner Duddingston House Properties won Edinburgh Council’s competition to redevelop the site and were awarded a contract to turn it in to a 120-bed hotel in 2014 and retain the lease until next year.

So they were contractually bound by the council to plan a hotel of that scale, only for it to be rejected by the council’s planning committee and the Scottish government.

“From the start, we have sought to faithfully implement the legal agreement that saw the potential for restoring a building that has had no proper use in more than 50 years,” wrote Mr Orr.

Pointing out the rival bid to turn the building into a new home for the private St Mary’s Music School will punch a hole in the front to create a new entrance prompted an angry response from its promoter, residential property developer Willie Gray Muir, who accused Urbanist/DHP of ignoring “overwhelming support” for the music school.

“It’s their failure to deliver on their promises which has led to the building being held hostage to increasing decay for over ten years,” he said. "This latest desperate attempt to maintain a hold on a building against a backdrop of years of failure would be laughable if it wasn't so depressingly predictable.”

Why they should just give up, having spent millions on their plan is unclear, but Mr Gray Muir’s intemperate attack hardly strengthens his own case, even though his plan was granted planning permission despite significant alterations to a grade-A listed building.

A report goes to the council’s finance committee next week, and I have no part in that, but the question for my colleagues is whether the council wants a hotel as originally agreed, a private music school or to give someone else a go at turning it into who knows what, because the council doesn’t have any need for another old building or the wherewithal to undertake a cripplingly expensive restoration job.

It’s unclear why the council would want its property to be used to assist the music school when it has one of its own at Broughton High, but in the last three years it hasn’t shown much enthusiasm for the visitor economy either.

The St Mary’s plan is bank-rolled by arts philanthropist Carol Grigor’s Dunard Fund, which is also funding the controversial St Andrew Square concert hall to be named after it, and its most recent accounts show it has £93m at its disposal, so the money appears to be there.

And then there is the current St Mary’s site, a prime West End site for residential development, just round the corner from Donaldson’s where three-bedroom flats are currently going for over £1m. Property developers will be queuing up.

John McLellan is a Conservative councillor for Craigentinny/Duddingston

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