Office building demolition rated unsupportable
Plans to bulldoze a turn-ofthe century office building in Newington to make way for student housing has been described as “simply unsupportable” by Edinburgh conservation group the Cockburn Association.
City-based SDR Property Developments Ltd wants to clear the site in Ratcliffe Terrace and build two six-storey accommodation blocks with a total of 59 student bedrooms. But in an official objection to the proposal, the Cockburn Association says the demolition of the current threestorey brick office building cannot be justified.
The Cockburn says: “This quirky, distinctive and highly original building is clearly suitable for continued use or for imaginative conversion. It is of some local heritage interest and a valuable survivor of a Newington streetscape that has lost many similar features of interest and distinction over the years. In the current climate emergency the continued demolition of perfectly sound and usable buildings such as this is simply unsupportable.”
As well as the office building, which is the base for a specialist design company, the site, at 27-29 and 31 Ratcliffe Terrace, currently includes three other buildings which are the premises of Causewayside Garage. On one side there is Jewson’s timber yard and on the other an open car park area.
The developers say many industrial buildings and workshops have slowly disappeared from the area over the past 20 years and describe the site where they want to build the student housing as “effectively a gap in the predominantly residential tenement form on the rest of Ratcliffe Terrace”. But in their objection, the Cockburn says: “It is of a poor architectural design whose height, scale, bulk, massing, horizontal pattern and materiality are at odds with the prevailing streetscape. We question whether this proposal has appropriate levels of internal and external amenity space, external greenspace and adequate access and servicing arrangements.”
And the Cockburn adds: “We also note local concerns regarding the increasing concentration of student accommodation blocks in this area of the city. These concerns underline the need for objective, comprehensive and data-driven student needs assessments to accompany every purposebuilt student accommodation application.”