Things can only get worse for music centre - Kevin Buckle

There are plans for the old Royal High School building to be turned into a National Centre for music and home for St Mary's Music School

News that transformation of the old Royal High School building into an international music centre was going to cost “significantly” more than first estimated and will now take four years to complete was met on the whole with very little comment.

For those who had been against the idea of a music school, or supported the rival plans for a hotel, it just confirmed what they always knew. While for supporters it was difficult to put any positive spin on the news.

Plans were first announced to relocate the independent St Mary’s Music School eight years ago and it was seen by some as a deliberate move to block the luxury hotel that had already been agreed for the site.

While it was City of Edinburgh Council itself that had decided that a hotel was the best use for the site, the hotel still needed to gain planning permission and in a bizarre twist it went from very narrowly losing the vote at a council planning meeting to unanimously losing the vote for a project that heeded the concerns initially expressed.

What had happened in the meantime was that those opposed to the hotel had decided the music school needed to move and the former Royal High School was the perfect site. Given the issues with the school it was hardly the perfect site for anything but at least there would be no public money involved as it was to be bankrolled by the philanthropist Carol Colburn-Grigor and her Dunard Fund to the tune of £35 million.

Later this figure went up to £55m but still we were told it would all be covered by the fund which would pay for the £45m redevelopment costs and £10m maintenance and running costs.

However this is by no means an end to the possible cost because of the significant work to be carried out creating a new entrance as Willie Gray Muir, chairman of the Royal High School Preservation Trust which is behind the project, admitted. Only after exploratory work is carried out will the full cost be revealed – a gamble the council seem quite happy to take given the hotel’s plans involved no such uncertainty.

An even bigger gamble is whether the works will be possible at all, or if they will not end up causing significant damage. Now the National Lottery Heritage Fund is expected, among others, to be asked to help out while at the same time we are told that procedures are being put in place so that the money will be available whatever the cost.

Certainly as the Tron Kirk knows only too well it is certainly not possible to rely on lottery funding, so the trust needs to decide whether it has the money or not as scaling back plans will only reduce costs by a limited amount.

What the council could have had was a fully-funded prestigious hotel committed to supporting the arts which might well have even been open by now. What they actually have is a music school now looking for public funding, with structural concerns, which will not ready for four years. Worryingly for the public purse and possible investors things can only get worse.