It
was somehow fitting that the proposed demolition of Stead’s Place on Leith Walk
in Edinburgh was thrown out by City of Edinburgh Council’s planning department
during Independent Venue Week. This is the UK-wide initiative designed to
showcase grassroots live music venues in the face of potentially being put out
of business by encroaching gentrification. One of the Edinburgh venues involved
in Independent Venue Week was Leith Depot, which, since opening in 2014 after reinventing
its premises from what had been considered to be the worst pub in the city, has
quickly grown to become one of the capital’s most significant music venues.
Leith
Depot is also one of the last remaining businesses on Stead’s Place, the
two-storey 1920s sandstone block bought wholesale by Drum Property Group with
the aim of flattening it. In its place, Drum proposed building a five-storey
construction that would house 471 student flats, a 56-bedroom hotel, 53 so-called
affordable flats – a misleading piece of civic newspeak that points up a form
of wealth-based social cleansing – and business and retail units.
Once
Drum moved in, it was indicated to all sitting tenants that their leases would
not be renewed once they run out this coming October. In the months leading up
to last week’s four and a half hour planning meeting most businesses moved on,
their once thriving shop-fronts boarded up by their former landlords. Having
forced businesses hands, if Drum’s intent was to uglify the area even more by
such actions, their failure was compounded by the increasingly entertaining graffiti
painted onto the boards alongside enlargements of letters of support from local
councillors, MPs and MSPs.
On
the day of the meeting, a noisy protest by supporters of the Save Leith Walk
campaign outside the City Chambers was punctuated by the sort of live drumming
which has been the mainstay of grassroots protests for decades. Any perceived irony
in using the word ‘drum’ as a creative force rather than one associated with
knocking down buildings was probably unintentional.
With
council officers recommending that Drum’s proposals be accepted by the planning
committee, also apparently unintentional was the failure of officials to put
into the public domain what was described as being a ‘scathing’ report on the proposals.
This had been drawn up in January 2018 by Edinburgh Urban Design Panel, a
council run body made up of senior planners, architects, heritage bodies and
academics to provide design advice to planners and developers.
While
an un-named council official apologised for what was described as an oversight,
how such a high profile case as Stead’s Place had fallen prey to such
carelessness, potentially damaging Save Leith Walk’s argument, is a mystery. As
indeed were some of the figures that seemed to point to a high level of support
for Drum’s proposals among the city’s student fraternity.
Whatever
the facts, it’s fair to say that Drum haven’t had an easy ride from their
opponents. In a column in the Edinburgh Evening News in September 2018, Drum’s
group managing director Graham Bone described much of the criticism aimed their
way as ‘ill-informed, politically or personally motivated and on one occasion,
downright offensive.’ Well, diddums. While any unwarranted personal abuse is
totally unacceptable, whatever was levelled against Drum is unlikely to be more
offensive than buying up someone else’s neighbourhood, waving 50 million quid
around and expecting everyone to welcome you with open arms.
In
the same article, Leith Depot was singled out as being un-co-operative with
Drum’s plans. These included a purpose-built music venue, they said, which
those running Leith Depot could return to once it was built.
This
is what developers like Drum Property Group do. Their plans invariably include
some kind of loosely-defined ‘cultural hub’ or ‘arts venue.’ This acts as a
reassuring hug to the councils they are applying to that they are somehow enlightened
to the need for arts provision for the community they are parachuting into. In
reality, their terms are so vague, and come with no first-hand knowledge of
what running an arts venue or a music venue entails, as to be meaningless. So
meaningless, in fact, that by the time the development’s final plans are drawn
up they have usually disappeared completely.
In
the case of Stead’s Place, Drum appeared to believe it was perfectly feasible
to turf Leith Depot onto the street in October of this year to find a new home.
They then presumed it would be easy enough for them to move seamlessly into the
new space in a couple of years’ time having lost two years’ worth of revenue, and
be bloody well grateful.
Such
presumptions betray a wholesale lack of knowledge, both of how small music
venues work, and, more significantly, perhaps, how small music venues work specifically
in Edinburgh. First of all, anyone taking even a cursory glance at the city’s fragile
musical infrastructure will recognise within five minutes that small venues don’t
grow on whatever trees the council hasn’t yet cut down. It could take those
running Leith Depot months if not years to find appropriate premises that work
as well as their current home.
Secondly,
what Leith Depot has built up since it opened is unique. The success of its
upstairs venue wasn’t planned. Yet by taking a once scary establishment and
transforming it into somewhere accessible for anyone wanting to put on an event,
it has helped foster a thriving musical community and given it a much-needed
social centre.
Every
scene needs a focal point, and that is usually a venue with a pub attached or
vice versa. This has been the case in Edinburgh at various points, when the likes
of the Tap O’Lauriston and Cas Rock provided something similar to what Leith
Depot does now. Developers can’t legislate for such activity simply by putting
up a new building. Nor do they appear to care enough to want to, and any claims
to the contrary are difficult to take seriously. It should be noted as well
that both the Tap and the Cas Rock have long since been demolished.
While
the unanimous rejection of Drum’s proposals is a major victory, those who so
actively and effectively opposed it shouldn’t rest on their laurels. Drum can
afford to play the long game. They have expensive lawyers, and the company has already
indicated in Construction Weekly that they will appeal against last week’s
decision, possibly taking it to the Scottish Government. As current laws stand,
if the committee’s decision had gone the other way, community groups arguing
against Drum’s proposals would not have had the same luxury of appeal.
All
of which points up the glaring imbalance in planning laws in favour of
developers. There are precedents here. In 2016, the Scottish Government
recorder overturned City of Edinburgh Council’s decision to reject landowner
Glovart Holdings Ltd’s attempts to demolish the Earthy restaurant in the
Canonmills area of Edinburgh. This demonstrated how easy it is for the Scottish
Government to reject local democracy when it suits them, and Stead’s Place may
yet end up flattened.
In
the meantime, Drum can simply dig in their heels until they get their own way,
letting their empty properties go to wrack and ruin, and either continue to carry
out their intended eviction of sitting tenants in October or else hike up rents
until they are priced out of the area. Again, this is what developers do.
Take
a look at the former Odeon cinema on South Clerk Street, which was once owned
by Duddingston Leisure/ Duddingston House Properties. As Duddingston’s various
attempts to turn the building into flats were rejected, the building lay empty
for twelve years. Duddingston, incidentally, are also the company proposing to
turn the iconic Old Royal High School into a hotel.
An attempt
by Susan Boyle’s brother Gerry to turn the South Clerk Street Odeon into an
upmarket cabaret venue failed, and since 2015 the building has been owned by
the G1 group, whose much vaunted plans to reopen the space as a cinema and restaurant
have yet to bear fruit.
Look
too at the site of what was once Studio 24, the Calton Road alternative
music-based nightclub, which was eventually sold to developers in 2017. This
followed a decade of attrition after new residential properties were built
without sound-proofing in a once empty thoroughfare surrounding the venue. This
is a stone’s throw from the ongoing New Waverley development that saw the
closure and demolition of the former bus station that formed the original home
of the Bongo Club on New Street. Almost two years on since the club’s closure,
Studio 24’s colourful customised façade fronts a still empty building, with future
plans for the site not known at this address at least.
Whatever
happens next regarding Stead’s Place, it’s worth keeping an eye on Drum’s
recent form elsewhere in terms of buying up thriving properties with a view to
converting them into cash cows. While the Stead’s Place soap opera gathered
pace, in 2018, Drum quietly picked up St Margaret’s House, Edinburgh’s biggest
independent arts complex, which houses studios and numerous small businesses in
a London Road office block. With planning permission already in place, Drum
look set to convert the building into – wait for it - student flats. This is
tempered by the inevitable salve of affordable housing and unspecified ‘facilities
for the benefit of the local community.’
The
fact that developers are allowed to destroy businesses and community amenities in
this way points up an imbalance which suggests local democracy – or any
democracy come to that – is being subverted by big businesses only interested
in making a buck, and who aren’t overly concerned by the damage they cause
along the way.
This
is far from unique to Edinburgh. Take a walk through the city centre building
sites of Liverpool, London, Glasgow and beyond to see a similarly styled set of
new-builds in progress. Like Edinburgh, their soul-less and homogenised
exteriors have been sanctioned by local authorities in thrall to cavalier spivs
in suits who talk big and promise the world before carving up the loot. The
communities the developers buy up may be rough around the edges, but that
roughness is part of a living, breathing character developed organically over
decades. For those same men in suits to rip the throbbing hearts from them with
a toxic mix of bulldozers and bullshit is social and cultural vandalism of the
worst kind.
Leith’s
victory over Drum has not only shown an impassioned degree of people power from
the various tentacles of opposition to Drum’s proposal. It has also exposed the
arrogant presumption of developers the world over that they will get their own
way no matter what. But if this is to have a more long-term effect so the power
is shifted into local communities, changes in the law are required as a matter
of urgency.
First
of all, community groups must have the same right of appeal as developers. Secondly,
if developers have their plans unanimously rejected as Drum have with Stead’s
Place, the undoubtedly sore losers must not be allowed to effectively hold
local authorities to ransom by allowing their property to decline into an unoccupied
slum.
If
commercial properties are left empty by developers, local authorities should
have the power to undertake a compulsory purchase order on the property and
prosecute the developers for wilful neglect. Sitting tenants such as Leith
Depot should be subject to a rent cap, with any attempt to increase the costs
of their lease at more than standard market value deemed illegal.
Law-savvy
property types will no doubt find such proposals by turns hilarious, ridiculous,
ill-informed, utopian and unworkable. Maybe they’re right, but once again, that’s
what developers do.
There
have been a lot of articles written about Leith in the last couple of years.
Many have trilled out the sort of achingly aspirational nonsense about how it
is one of Scotland and the UK’s ‘coolest places to live’. Whilst by no means deliberate,
such coffee-table fluff becomes an accidental form of soft propaganda for Drum
and their ilk. Demand for overpriced rabbit hutches knocked up on the cheap and
flogged off to those desperate for the kind of gritty authenticity a certain
postcode affords them is boosted to the max by such gushing colour supplement
catnip.
Conversely,
attacks on some of the initiatives undertaken by grassroots groups in the area
are similarly missing the point. It is those at local authority and government
level who allow developers to use the likes of Leith Depot as a shortcut to
gentrification who should be challenged, not the various micro-communities living
and working in the area.
Of
course, Leith is changing, and no-one wants to preserve it in aspic, but Leith residents
and those who enjoy its various amenities don’t need the men from Drum to tell
them how to do things. Yet Drum’s attempt to demolish Stead’s Pace is arguably part
of a more dubious ideology. What happens, after all, when the bottom falls out
of the student accommodation market? Given the forthcoming Brexit omnishambles,
in terms of international exchanges, this is likely to happen sooner rather
than later. Might the city’s numerous student developments be left to rot,
perhaps? Au contraire.
As one
on-site construction worker who actually puts these concrete boxes together has
told me, structurally speaking, it is easy enough to knock through a couple of
walls and convert them into luxury apartments with a minimum of bureaucratic
fuss. Such a move could be seen as a long-term strategy to create even more
inner-city social apartheid of the sort highlighted both in Fritz Lang’s film,
Metropolis, and J.G. Ballard’s novel, High-Rise. What was once dystopian
fantasy, it seems, is now dangerously close to fact.
Perhaps
it always was, and those behind it just don’t care enough to try and hide it
anymore now they’ve been found out. More fool them. The protests outside
Edinburgh’s City Chambers and events at Leith Depot throughout Independent
Venue Week were a clarion call. As those who thought they could knock down
Stead’s Place un-challenged have just discovered, a different drum is beating a
little louder every day.
Bella Caledonia, February 2019
ends
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