An item of "Breaking News". Will appear on the Breaking News page and the front page.
As contractors celebrate the end of their first year on-site at the St James Centre, with the project so far on schedule, doubts about the future of Leith Street are surfacing elsewhere.
The proposals causing concern involve various changes in use from carriageway to footway and footway to cycleway.
To join the debate about Picardy Place, writes David Jamieson of ZONE Architects, we offer the attached solution.
It's a proposal which, unlike the Council’s traffic-centric plans, is based on enhancing the sense of place and adding to the cultural quarter generated by the Playhouse, Omni Cinema and St Mary’s Cathedral.
The space for a potential building, no longer marooned in the middle of a roundabout, could be a worthy site for a new 1000-seat concert hall, for example.
‘FASCINATING ASSEMBLY’ REVIEWED
While occasionally displaying works of art from further afield (such as this unusual bronze by Eutrope Bouret, see Issue 267), Glenn Ross’s Colours Gallery on Dundas Street has championed nineteenth and twentieth-century Scottish painting for many years.
As well as highlighting the great Colourists – and such as Eardley, Redpath, Gillies, Maxwell et al. – the gallery has profiled lesser-known and neglected artists whose stars have long deserved to shine again.
LAWRENCE MEETS LOCALS IN LIVELY DISCUSSION
City of Edinburgh Council’s Executive Director of Place Paul Lawrence addressed the New Town & Broughton Community Council yesterday evening, and took questions from members of the public about the controversial Picardy Place proposal (PPP).
He initially covered much of the same ground covered during the Transport & Environment Committee on 5 October.
On the face of it, the sign attached to a Princes Street pedestrian crossing seems to make rather a bold claim: ‘press the button to access a glimpse of planetary consciousness’.
I tried it, and pressing the button resulted only in a yellow ‘Wait’ sign lighting up, and a short pause before the usual little green man and an urgent peeping.
It all seems a far cry from James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis of an evolving, self-regulating integration of Earth’s biosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere and pedosphere.
VICTORY WITH A HOP, SKIP AND A THUMP
Players from Drummond Tennis Club have once again beaten all comers to retain their title as team champions in the World Stone Skimming Championships, writes Marcus Mackenzie.
ONLY LIMITED ROOM FOR MANOEUVRE
Fundamental redesign of the proposed Picardy Place gyratory is not possible if it entails spending more money or time on the project.
So said Paul Lawrence, City of Edinburgh Council’s Executive Director of Place, in answering questions at today’s Transport & Environment Committee.
BATTLE FOR OLD ROYAL HIGH ENTERS NEW PHASE
Over 100 guests assembled in the Scottish Parliament building at Holyrood last night in a reception aimed at pushing the cause of the Perfect Harmony campaign.
Perfect Harmony promotes the interests of St Mary’s Music School and the Royal High School Preservation Trust which, together, want an expanded St Mary’s to move into a conservation-led redesign of Thomas Hamilton’s building and adjacent spaces on Regent Road.
A major, multi-agency counter-terrorism exercise begins today in central and eastern Scotland and Northumbria.
What follows is quoted in full from a Police Scotland press release.
The exercise will begin near Edinburgh and will continue at smaller sites and individual properties across Scotland and the North East of England until 5 October.
Therefore, members of the public may notice increased emergency services activity in certain areas around Edinburgh, the Lothians, the East of Scotland and Northumbria.
COUNCIL U-TURNS ON BAD PLANS AND FLAWED PROCESS
With a surprising turn of pace, the Transport & Environment Committee convener Lesley MacInnes has responded to an avalanche of protest at poorly designed and inadequately consulted plans for Picardy Place.
Individuals, lobbyists, ‘stakeholders’, councillors and community councils railed against the proposals and the method of their delivery.