An item of "Breaking News". Will appear on the Breaking News page and the front page.
BANDSTAND PLANS STILL LEAVE UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
Partially eclipsed by high-profile hoo-has over the old Royal High School, the Ross Development Trust (RDT) last week presented outline proposals for West Princes Street Gardens at a public meeting on 13 March organised by the Cockburn Association.
MORE FUN AND GAMES AT CITY CHOKE-SPOT
Phased utility works lasting 16 weeks began this morning, and will affect traffic on Leith Street.
These are in addition to the works reported here on 28 February which are expected to last up to 44 weeks from September 2017.
OLD ROYAL HIGH SCHOOL FUTURE DIVIDES OPINION
As the 24 March deadline approaches for comments on latest plans for the old Royal High School, both sides are redoubling their efforts to persuade.
Representatives from Urbanist Hotels, Hoskins Architects and Duddingston House Properties summarised their proposal for a luxury hotel to the New Town & Broughton Community Council on 13 March.
As Spurtle prepared to attend and report on this evening's meeting at Central Hall, we unexpectedly received the following statement by Robert A.M. Stern.
Stern is an author and internationally recognised practising architect. He was Dean (1998–2016) and J.M. Hoppin Professor at Yale School of Architecture.
We reproduce his contribution to the debate unedited and in full.
Locals reacted with scepticism, alarm and irritation to a briefing on why Leith Street will be closed for 44 weeks from September and how temporary diversions will cope (see Breaking news, 28.2.17.)
The occasion was a meeting of the New Town & Broughton Community Council (NTBCC).
Many locals have noticed the mysterious disappearance of parking meters over recent weeks.
Only the plastic-wrapped stumps remain, offering puzzlement to those in search of a ticket and no end of fun to dogs who enjoy a challenge.
‘Have they been disembolished?’ one reader asks hopefully.
HENRY JABBOUR AT THE UNION GALLERY
Like many others locally, we’ve missed the Union Gallery since its removal from Broughton Street to larger premises on Drumsheugh Place.
A visit to the West End on Friday showed that Union’s owner Alison Auldjo has lost none of her knack for finding and nurturing great new talent, most recently that of Henry Jabbour.
LOCALS GET THE LAST WORD
Forrest’s Croall Place extravaganza provokes mixed reactions among Spurtle team members.
Some regard it as a colourful and attractive addition to the neighbourhood, which always cheers them up on their way to work.
Others see only a ginormous eyesore that is too big, too bright, and too distracting. It would, say the latter, be better off viewed through sunglasses from the back row of a cinema.
Spurtle has been studying heavily redacted emails which shed light on Edinburgh Council's struggle to find performance and events spaces in the city-central New Town.
The hock it is.
Whatever the usually authoritative Villeneuve Wines A-board on Broughton Street may say to the contrary, we’re not convinced.
Ceno, from the Greek kenos for empty, sillica, from the Latin silex for flint or quartz, and phobia, from the Greek phobos for phobia, appear nowhere together in any combination in the entire Oxford English Dictionary.
In fact, insofar as cenosillicaphobia has any existence at all as a word, it appears to be only in online articles discussing its non-existence.