Extending the tramline beyond York Place looks increasingly likely now that TIAA Henderson Real Estate (THRE) has released more detail on its plans for the St James Quarter (Breaking news, 7.1.15).
Back in October we reported with surprise the assertion by THRE that developing Picardy Place no longer featured in its proposals for the area (Breaking news, 27.10.14).
We distinctly remembered the company’s PAN exhibition on 7 December 2013 at which various options were mooted for a new hotel at the centre of an urban block defined by three streets (Breaking news, 9.12.13).
Those plans, it now emerges, were based on the City of Edinburgh Council’s 2009 traffic layout and design, in which Picardy Place would be a major tramstop and transport interchange. But they lost relevance when the tramline was cut short at York Place.
Now, though. according to an addendum to THRE’s latest 'Illustrative Masterplan':
[…] there are again proposals to continue the tram to Picardy as originally planned, possibly extending the route further. These new proposals are being developed in conjunction with the City of Edinburgh Council and Transport for Edinburgh, with some slight revisions to the original layout envisaged at Picardy Place.
Running alongside that work, says THRE, the Council itself is looking at fresh development options ‘for the revised site boundary’ to establish its ‘value and appropriate massing and building height’.
It is expected that further details will 'emerge in due course,’ concludes THRE, 'but the principle of developing this important gateway into the St James Quarter has now been accepted’.
Interestingly, the planning documentation we reported yesterday is liberally sprinkled with artists’ impressions, some of which include a banana-shaped structure directly opposite the Omni Centre, and a larger open area behind it on the Sherlock Holmes statue side. This is essentially the Option 2 we detailed in Breaking news (9.12.13).
Readers will recall how CEC last year volunteered £61m to improve local infrastructure and public space in the area through a controversial ‘Regeneration Accelerator Model’ (Breaking news, 29.4.14; Extras, 2.5.14). Much of this was earmarked precisely for the transport interchange at Picardy Place.
Extending the tramline is clearly seen as crucial, and was the subject of a report to Council on 11 December (attached as pdf below). That document noted that investment in public and active transport was a key economic enabler, and acknowledged a need for more design work and ground investigation surveys to integrate tram services with the St James Quarter and Leith Programme.
A detailed assessment of the financial, business, procurement and programme implications will be fed back to the Council by late spring 2015.
It seems very likely to Spurtle that the combined pressure of developing Picardy Place in step with the St James Quarter, and the legislative deadlines for acquiring land by compulsory purchase (May 2016) and starting construction (2021) on any extension of Line 1 will prove irresistible.
Trams will almost certainly reach Picardy Place and may well go further.
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