1 April

BELLEVUE TRANSFORMED 

This morning, exclusively, Spurtle can reveal that a major new sports and hotel complex could be coming to Broughton if City of Edinburgh Council grants outline planning consent. 

We’ve found no official pre-application trace of the scheme.

However, we understand an undisclosed US businessman – whose international sports-venue portfolio alone is valued at over $600 million – is in talks to purchase, demolish and redevelop the Lothian Buses Depot/HQ area around Annandale Street.

Urban planning experts say there's a strong case for flattening the space outside Drummond Community High School. But they face an uphill task convincing some locals that their plans are well grounded.

The publicly accessible hard surface recreation area currently drops by as much as 28 feet between the bus stop on Mansfield Place and the bike sheds at the bottom of Bellevue Place. 

'It's a hazard and always has been,' says Community Outreach Manager Iona Downes of Dutch-based civic forum consultancy Eerste van de Vierde UK (EvdV).

If a group of 'far-sighted entrepreneurs' get their way today, the York Place tram stop may cease before it has even properly begun. 

Spurtle understands that a plan put before transport chiefs in December, and due for determination this morning, proposes re-naming the York Place stop 'Leith Gateway' when trams start operating in May.

The Edinburgh Evening News will relaunch soon in a major 'change of tack', it was claimed today.

Senior management at owners Jonhston Press want to reverse nose-diving circulation figures and plummeting profits. But rather than produce fewer and fewer pages at greater cost with an ever-increasing number of low-brow human-interest stories, bosses have decided to head upmarket and cover the news more seriously.

It never rains but it poohs.

No sooner has Forth Ports's hugely controversial proposal for a biomass plant in Leith Docks been seen off than a new scheme enters the earliest stages of the Council's planning system – this time in Bellevue.

Edinburgh-based Tynecastle Sustainable Futures Ltd has entered ante-pre-application consultations with City Planning officials. They aim to instal a temporary 'micro-biomass' plant at the carpark adjacent to Broughton Primary School on Bellevue Road.

A German-based artist plans to complete and install six original works along the Water of Leith sculpture trail this summer. But it is a development which one Broughton critic is already branding an 'affront to the people of Edinburgh'.

O.G. Gonflé – the 42-year-old Swiss post-redactionist and self-styled 'ideo-pole' now resident in Hamburg – has promised to commit up to half his 2010 Prix Oxygène award (€750,000) to the project, on condition that Creative Scotland provide match-funding.

A Broughton pensioner has been robbed in broad daylight whilst inspecting refurbishment work at Glenogle Baths on 31 March.

Una Kwiecień (75), pictured exclusively by Spurtle in the seconds before the incident, was chatting to 'mystery bathers' brought in by Council officials to test new Winter Spa facilities prior to re-opening.

'One minute everything was grand,' said Mrs Kwiecień, 'the next minute my bag was lifted.'

A banana skin, half-sucked pandrops, and empty packet of roasted cashew nuts belonging to the victim were later recovered from the scene.