Edinburgh’s new St James Centre: a North Sea Dubai or better than Buchanan Galleries? – John McLellan

New St James Centre in Edinburgh will turn the East End into a retail magnet with knock-on effects on Princes Street and other parts of the city centre, writes John McLellan.

New Look is to flit from Princes Street to the new St James Centre (Picture: Lisa Ferguson)

With an annual rent of £500,000, that’s half a million items Poundland will have to sell at its proposed Princes Street store just to open the door, never mind switching on the lights and paying the staff before it can even think about a profit.

The thrift chain is obviously confident the deal is worth it and with footfall of over 40,000 a day maybe it’s worthwhile, but with this week’s announcement that New Look and Hackett are flitting to the new St James Centre, the warnings about the future of what was Edinburgh’s premier shopping street are being realised.

The new centre is on track to open late next summer and while the illustrations of how it will look are dramatic enough, they do not do justice to the vast scale of its curved galleries and plazas, which for the first time will give Edinburgh a retail experience to match, if not better, Glasgow’s Buchanan Galleries.

From a tour of the site last week, it’s clear that in a predominantly wet and windy city, shoppers and diners will flock to its wide walkways in numbers impossible in the old centre.

Detractors might call it the North Sea’s Dubai, but with fashionable restaurants and bars just outside around St Andrew Square, the East End will be one powerful retail electro-magnet.

And if Poundland is moving into Princes Street, the South Bridge hasn’t got a hope.

The review of city centre planning policy later this year can’t come soon enough.

Taxi to planning committee for Cameron?

Once it was known the city council’s finance vice-convener Cllr Lezley Cameron had not only made excessive taxi expense claims but had also been chased for council tax arrears, she had to go.

The lesson for anyone in this position is to apologise quickly for the oversight and stump up with equal haste. By digging in her heels, Cllr Cameron just dug herself deeper in bother.

Her boss, Labour leader Cllr Cammy Day, says another suitable role is being sought for her, but as Labour already has the convenership of the education and communities committees and she has already been hauled out of housing, it really only leaves transport or planning.

After a spectacular rift with housing convener Kate Campbell, expecting a harmonious relationship with Lesley Macinnes on transport might be, shall we say, fanciful. My bet is planning; at least she believes in economic development…