Harvey Nichols in Edinburgh: How Capital stole a march on Glasgow and pulled off an economic coup with lasting benefits – Donald Anderson

I was reminded of how old I’m getting when Steve Spray of LaSalle Investment Management advised me that this August sees the 20th anniversary of the opening of Harvey Nichols in Edinburgh.

Shoppers queue outside Harvey Nichols in Edinburgh during a sale (Picture: Andrew Milligan/PA Wire)

Steve was one of the masterminds behind a coup that saw Edinburgh attract one of the world’s leading brands to become the centrepiece of the Multrees Walk development at St Andrew Square.

Back in the 1990s, hardly a month went past without newspaper headlines bemoaning the poor shopping on offer in Edinburgh, and rightly so. Harvey Nichols seemed destined to be going to the old GPO site in Glasgow.

At that time, the Edinburgh area lost 19 per cent of retail spending to Glasgow. Princes Street was struggling, and many options were looked at for bringing new shoppers back to the city.

I was a young convener of economic development on the council and was approached by Steve Spray. And, together with property expert John McGregor, we worked hand in glove with then director of city development, George Hazel, to deliver what became one of the biggest coups that Edinburgh has achieved in modern times.

There was absolute secrecy. We all knew that if word got out that Edinburgh was working on proposals to bring Harvey Nichols to Edinburgh, there would likely be a bidding war. And we understood that Glasgow would have deeper pockets with which to tempt Harvey Nichols west.

The council’s then chief executive Tom Aitchison was also instrumental. An Edinburgh boy, he was passionate about the city and instantly understood the significance of such an investment.

The announcement was a total shock to the investment community, and to the rest of Scotland. The decision instantly turned Edinburgh around as a shopping destination. Many other Edinburgh successes can be traced back to then. It was crucial in securing the redevelopment of the Edinburgh St James Centre, which at the time was just ugly and awful.

The rest is pretty much history. George Street was transformed with high end retailers arriving in droves. The St James Quarter has opened successfully and the Edinburgh Grand, the Gleneagles Townhouse and Malmaison have all been developed within a stone’s throw of Harvey Nichols.

The then Aberdeen Standard development on St Andrew Square was also made possible because of how ‘investible’ Edinburgh became. The gardens in St Andrew Square are the only major private gardens in the city centre that have been opened to the public in recent years, and that happened on the back of the success of bringing Harvey Nichols to Edinburgh.

The Capital’s heart beats a lot stronger than it did in the 1990s. It’s a more attractive location to visit and invest in. One hundred million people have been to Multrees Walk since it opened, and it’s become the leading luxury goods destination outside London.

Edinburgh faces many of the same challenges that other cities do, with such a rapidly changing environment for shopping, but it can face them with far greater confidence thanks to a top-secret campaign that yielded a phenomenal, and very Edinburgh, coup.

Donald Anderson is director of Playfair Scotland and a former Edinburgh Council leader