New life for the New Town
Development proposal could deliver many homes and job opportunities for central Edinburgh, helping make the city’s heart beat even stronger
Proposals for the largest brownfield development in the Capital’s city centre for many years will be considered by the City of Edinburgh Council tomorrow. The 5.9-acre brownfield site is in the north of Edinburgh’s New Town and adjacent to the much-loved King George V Park.
Proposals for the New Town Quarter from Edinburgh-based property developer Ediston, in collaboration with Orion Capital Managers, are recommended for approval and have cleared the many complex policy issues ahead of consideration by the council.
The planned development will provide 350 new homes, modern workspace for 700 people and be a major economic boost to Edinburgh’s city centre and the Capital’s economy. The construction alone will boost the local economy by more than £27.7 million a year while work is carried out, and the development will further boost the local economy by £35.5m each year once complete.
If the proposals are approved by the council, work will begin quickly, and the New Town Quarter development could be complete as early as 2024.
Great care has been taken by Ediston to consult local residents, with more than 50 meetings and four formal consultation events with community groups and representatives having taken place.
The outcome is a development that complies with the City of Edinburgh Council’s planning policies and guidelines. Importantly, it also marries the council’s vision for brownfield development and the regeneration of the city centre, with a focus on new homes and employment – both of which are key drivers of growth and inclusion.
Central themes of the New Town Quarter proposals include:
■ Heights of buildings in the development to be in-keeping with the local area.
■ Delivery of high-quality architecture, finishes, and the creation of beautifully curated new open spaces.
■ Almost a quarter of the site given over to communal amenity greenspace and private garden/ terrace space.
■ New public realm, including fully accessible pedestrian street connecting Dundas Street to King George V Park.
■ A 25-year Tree Management Plan, a strategy which will ensure that the many important trees in the local area are protected for the long-term.
■ Protection of the important line of trees on the adjacent Royal Crescent and Fettes Row.
■ The largest investment for improving the neighbouring George V Park for many years.
■ 80,000sq ft of much-needed prime office space for the city centre.
■ 350 new homes, including the first significant delivery of affordable homes in the New Town.
■ New amenities for the area, including gym facilities, restaurants and cafés.
Commenting on the proposals, Ross Mcnulty, Development Director at Ediston, says, “We have worked very hard to comply with all the relevant policies for such an important site.
“Our design has been driven by a thorough understanding of the heritage issues associated with being adjacent to Edinburgh’s World Heritage Site, and to open up the area; breathing life and activity into what is currently a redundant brownfield part of the city.
“Placemaking has been at the forefront of the design process, and we are determined to leave a lasting and positive legacy for both the new residents and the existing community.
Mcnulty continues: “We have conducted the largest consultation exercise ever carried out in this local community and, as a result, we have made many changes and improvements based on the feedback we have received.
“I am convinced that New Town Quarter will quickly become one of the best places to live and work in one of the world’s finest cities and will help make Edinburgh’s heart beat even stronger.
“We hope the proposals secure council approval, and we can look forward to turning the vision into a reality.”
Walter Bernstein, scriptwriter. Born: August 20 1919 in New York, United States. Died: January 23 2021 in New York, aged 101.
Like a scene out of a Hollywood thriller, scriptwriter Walter Bernstein was tailed by the FBI in the 1950s when the authorities tried to destroy his career and he was blacklisted due to his left-wing affiliations.
Not only did Bernstein continue working under assumed names, he managed to capitalise on the experience, using it as the subject of several films, including The Front with Woody Allen. It also provided him with material for his wellregarded book Inside Out: A Memoir of the Blacklist.
A victim of senator joe crusade to rid American society of Communists and other left-wingers, Bernstein appeared on a blacklist of 151 names from show business and the arts in Red Channels: The Report of communist influence in Radio and Television in 1950. But, like other talented writers, he managed to find people who would “front” for him, pretending to have produced screenplaywritten .“the writers were luckier than the actors and directors,” Bernstein said. “They had to show their faces and we didn’t.” The practice reached its height of absurdity when Pierre Boulle, who wrote the novel on which Bridge on the River Kwai was based, won on oscar for the screen play. not only did he not write it, he could not even speak English.
In The Front (1976) Woody Allen played a restaurant cashier who agrees to front for a blacklisted writer for a fee. Director Martin Ritt and actor Zero Mostel had also been blacklisted. Bernstein said: “We deliberately hired blacklisted actors. It was kind of our revenge in a way, saying, ‘We’re still here. You didn’t drive us out ’.” bernstein followed up the
Front, with semi-tough, a comedy starring Burt Reynolds and Kris kris to ff er son as american footballers, and yanks, a drama with Richard Gere and Vanessa Redgrave, about US troops in England during the Second World War.
Described as a “human Energizer bunny” in a 2014 article in Esquire magazine, Bernstein continued teaching film until a few years ago and was in his nineties by the time the BBC broadcast the 2011 mini-series Hidden, on which he worked with writer ron an bennett and which starred Philip Glenister.
Unsurprisingly Bernstein sometimes tapped into paranoia, suspicion and fears whose origins lay in the Mccarthy era. Reviewing Hidden in the Guardian, Sam Wollaston wrote: “It's murky, atmospheric, intriguing… My only tiny problem is that I'm not entirely sure what's going on.”
Bernstein’ s teacher father and his mother were Jewish emigres from Eastern Europe, and Bernstein was born in 1919 in New york, where his school had so many pupils that they attended in shift sand his school day was over by noon, allowing him to spend afternoons at the cinema. His father had friends in France and Bernstein enrolled in a language course at Grenoble University, where he was excited to mix with Marxist intellectuals. Back in the US he studied English at Dartmouth, the Ivy League university in New Hampshire. He reviewed films, without having seen them –“Anyone could review a mo vie after seeing it” he said later. He joined the Young Communist League and found a market for short stories at the new york er magazine.
After graduating he was drafted and served as a reporter for the army newspaper Yank during the Second World War, filing articles from North Africa, Palestine, Sicily and Yugoslavia, where he managed to track down and interview Marshal Tito, who would later serve as the country’s Communist president.
Bernstein joined the Communist Party after the war, though like many others he resigned after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956.
A collection of short stories, based on his military experiences, proved popular and he headed for Hollywood, receiving his first screenwriting credit on the thriller Blood On My Hands, starring burt lancaster and Joan Fontaine. It came out in 1948, just as the anti-communist “witch-hunts” were beginning to gather momentum.
During the 1950s he worked largely in TV under assumed names, hiring or persuading friends or acquaintances to attend meetings in his place. He worked repeatedly with director Sidney Lumet. With the power of the blacklists beginning to weaken, Lumet gave him his second film credit on That Kind of Woman, with Sophia Loren, in 1959, more than ten years after his first credit. Bernstein wrote the first draft of The Magnificent Seven without a namecheck, though the omission was for reasons other than politics. Bernstein’s version stuck closely to Japanese original The Seven Samurai. Walter Newman wrote most of the dialogue and new plot elements, but william roberts, who did the final tweaks, got the sole writer credit.
Bernstein was one of the writers on Something’s Got to Give, Marilyn Monroe’s final, unfinished movie. And he directed one film, Little Miss Marker, starring Julie Andrews, Walter Matthau and Tony Curtis. Other credits include Heller in Pink Tights, Ritt’s Paris Blues, Lumet’s The Molly Maguires, with Sean Connery as are bellious irish- american coal miner, harold robbins adaptation The Betsy and The House on Carroll Street, which again had a blacklist theme.
Three marriages ended in divorce. He is survived by his fourth wife and by five children.