Student housing plan for St Paul’s church in Edinburgh alarms locals
Cocerns have been raised over plans to build new student flats on the site of a fire-ravaged former church.
St Paul’s Catholic Church was badly damaged in a fire in December 2014, just two months after it closed to parishioners.
We are quite alarmed that the developer has come in and said this is going to happen. There is already student accommodation for the college campus and those units are never full.
The blueprint has been submitted to the city council by EMA Architecture and Design, on behalf of Robert MacKenzie, who bought the site last year.
He claims the three-storey brick development would complement the ongoing regeneration of the surrounding area, and serve students at the nearby Granton campus of Edinburgh College.
But local residents fear it will not be in keeping with the wider plans for the district, which is undergoing a phased development of 700 affordable and private new homes, and would fail to attract students….