Forest BB

Want to stop the development of the Old Odeon into a hotel / student accomodation type place?

well: your chance to question the deveopers of the project and to make dissent is Thursday the 13th at 6.30 in the nicholson st. church (118 nicholson st)

It is a community center type place.

I am away so canot attend. it would be good to represent.
r

Let's avoid being against things like this just for the sake of it. There should be a good reason, beyond "changing something old into something new is bad."

I live in Leith, where there is loads of for-profit development going on all the time. It has been having a really positive effect on the area, except that there is always the odd busybody who objects to absolutely everything and does nothing but whinge, whinge, whinge. Thankfully the council manages to press on with a lot of stuff regardless.

To give an example of how the area has improved thanks to development: there is a deli down the road from me which has opened up recently. I go there regularly as it sells an amazing selection of tasty fairtrade and organic foodstuffs, great coffee, organic wines, fresh organic veg etc etc. I wouldn't want to be without it, but it wouldn't exist if not for the "gentrification" going on nearby. (That being the conversion of shitty, ugly, old, unused land into places for people to live & hang out).

The same goes for various other small & independently owned shops & galleries in the area, which can only exist because of the new people moving in. There has also been a number of new community projects springing up and doing positive things with the 'yoof', and there is now a local arts & culture festival and a local radio station focusing on local issues. And Leith has become safer. All good, all coming about as a result of the development that is going on in the area.

So what you're saying is, Leith has become a middle class haven?

Exactly! And if middle class means less crime, more community projects, more local arts/culture, more small independent shops and more fairtrade/organic food then I'm all for it.

There are still the old shops including the local butchers, fish shop, fruit & veg shop (non organic/local produce), newsagent etc. Nobody is going to force any Leithers to buy fairtrade if they don't like it, or don't feel they can afford it. Lidl is just up the road from me, the other way from the deli. It is mostly Polish speaking. I go there too, when I want cheap & basic stuff. I doubt there is a single fairtrade item in there. But that's ok. Whatever floats your boat, as they say...

- the odeon building is a listed building and one of the most beautiful and amazing cinemas i've ever been in.

the proposed project is to knock the entire thing down (except for the facade) and turn it into hotel & student accomodation. part of my problem with this is that it fits in with council plans to remove students and people of multiple occupancy out of areas like marchmont and bruntsfield so that gentrified yuppies can move in. (actually a stated aim from the local council person who suggested Bonnierigg for good digs for us people to live in - not that there is anything wrong with bonnierig, mind you.)

This has led to continued and insane changes in the hmo laws making it increasingly more difficult and expensive for friends to live together.

simultaneously, we've seen the erection of cheaply made but expensive to let student accomodation all around the area from an international student company who stands to profit a lot from these new laws as students will find it harder and harder to rent reasonable flat-style accomodation in the city center.

there are now 2 pottery workshops in Marchmont and the laundrette has turned into a clothes that sells posh baby clothes called "bohemia".

This was an amazing cinema, not a derilect warehouse, anyway.
This is why I am opposed to the change.

Roll on: Operation Hotel City 2000!

By 'international student company', do you mean UNITE?

unite seems to be the big one but, i am sure there are others in the edinburgh market. but, yes, unites got the site near the eca (next to the hotels) and next to the mosque and also, i think, down in leith, right?

I lived at Unite in Glasgow for 2 years. Best student flat experience of my life! There was a real sense of community there - all students together, from all different backgrounds.

Other student flats I lived in were often full of people that were the same. Like 4 or 5 white middle class stoners in a flat together, or something else similarly homogenous. Maybe that's good. But in Unite you mixed a lot more with different people from all over the world. I had a friend Dowie, from Barbados. Gordon was half Chinese, half Aberdonian. Khuram, an Edinburgh Muslim who loved Tupac. And Zareh, such a character, an Armenian from Iran who squatted his room for most of 2 years. He used to leave his window open at night and me & Gordon & the gambling Greeks would climb in and out for late smoking sessions. Good times!

I don't know if the company who build/operated the residences can be given the credit/blame for the mix of students they had in there. Isn't it usually the university who allocates rooms to students in university accommodation?

I think you get lots of cool foreign people in certain residences because the university sticks them together, and foreign people are generally cooler, and they are given priority over local students, and they don't have homogeneous friends already when they arrive.

Perhaps these new student residences will provide more interesting accommodation and contribute to a better education than the white middle class stoner flats, of which there are a few in Marchmont, I gather. Plus, I object to private landlords, so I think university accommodation (like council housing) is better, on the whole.

But I imagine that Unite are in it to make money, as is the council and the University. So students are going to have to pay extra so Unite can take their cut, and pay extra again to the University for accommodation which is aimed at conference goers rather than students. And white middle class stoners who aren't at university are being driven out of the centre. Hence the objections, maaannn.

Unite was a real bonus for me because I was attending a small college that didn't have any accommodation of its own. The alternative would have been to live in a shared flat elsewhere in Glasgow, which would probably not have been nearly as much of a rewarding experience. Unite was good value for money, especially over the summer when rent was half price. So what if they were making money?

It's got nothing to do with "changing something old into something new is bad." The Odeon was a great cinema and it's still a great building. Smashing it down to build a hotel is wasteful, and just utterly tasteless and totally unimaginative. Edinburgh doesn't need any more hotels or new hotel developments. Turning everything into hotels and luxury apartments is profitable but makes Edinburgh a shitty place to live. Surely something cultural, or at least interesting, could be done with that building? Something where culture and community projects could go on would be great.

And it's not about being against anything that's for-profit either. A hotel has no redeeming qualities. A good for-profit project would be fine.

But you are right, demolishing more of Edinburgh's cultural buildings and building hotels will reduce crime, increase culture and community projects, and promote fairtrade and organic food.

Planned gentrification of Edinburgh against the will of those who live here stinks. This reminds me of Edinburgh City Council's slogan: "Inspiring Capital."

i tend to agree with chombee , it seems quite an unimaginative use of the space . i like the idea of vertical farms

and the web page

http://verticalfarm.com/designs.php

Neil stop playing devil's avocado under the guise of being a true free thinker.
how dare you assume it's an adopted generalisation
"changing something old into something new is bad."
Get some civic pride, man,
of course it's fucking bad, I pass that building every day with outright awe to its history and future potential.
It's the architectural equivalent to Leslie Ash.
It's a bullshit and depressing proposal and it floats my boat as much as ten tonnes of shit.

i had always thought the odeon building was listed, so it would likely be redeveloped ratrher than knocked down.

It seems they are doing this with many listed buildings in Edinburgh now: leave the facade intact, demolish the building and replace it with something shit.

the owners have cunningly let the building go quite derilict in order to prove that it can be nothing but luxury student accomodation. it's a pity. a beautiful building. i reckon swithun and duncan should squat it and show mon. film nights there.

student halls are good, by the way, and can really bring disperate people together. my feeling is it's better to have the university provide these rather than private companies seperate from the uni.

i've never lived in unite. they are not the ones taking over the odeon site, as far as i can tell. they are merely an example of what's been happening,.
r

what ryan says is correct. It is incresingly common to try and charge outrageous rents for these buildings (i believe the Odeon was something like 180k, right?) and then when no-one rents them (surprise surprise) then you prove they are useless and knock em down. this is bad news. Yes to film nights in these I would definately come.

I couldn't possibly condone or encourage this sort of irresponsible and reckless behaviour.

I think something similar happened to a nice old music hall in Hackney recently. It was left empty until it became derelict and could then be turned into a car park or something.

My bolt cutters got lost in the move. Anyone got some spare ones?

yeah the idiots a sciennes halls charge £390 per month for a shit small room and a kitchin shared between 5. fuckers.

this is amazing!

I lived in Sciennes when I was an exchange student and it was a total ripoff. Exactly as Bill says - a shitty, small flat in a block of other shitty, small student flats. None of the character of the flats in Marchmont, Newington or elsewhere, and way more money too. The university already does a damn good job of making profit off of students in halls and university owned flats, and no doubt private companies will do the same. We can expect to see even higher rents as changing HMO regulations will mean very few other city centre locations available to students.

This is why some People & Planet folks were trying to start a student housing cooperative in Edinburgh. Unfortunately, it's a long-term project, students tend to be here for the short-term, and it involves a good chunk of cap-e-tal... But there are some very good examples of student housing coops in other parts of the UK and Europe.

Gentrification also means poor people get pushed even further out of the city centre. Rents get higher until the working poor can no longer afford to live in the area. And it doesn't mean less crime, just less crime for us nice middle class folks to see each day.

Where did this idea of the working poor come from? Sounds like you are stuck in the 1970s!

Student flats is a side issue. The point is the Odeon, and particularly its insides, is one of the most important pieces of early 20th century architecture in Edinburgh. It's grade B listed, and was in line to be upgraded to A. It has a huge auditorium inside which has been covered up for years. Even the large screen 1 that some of us will remember is only the upstairs part of the original room, which is all still there, features preserved and boarded up. It has an amazing art deco parlour cafe at the front and lots more. It could be Edinburgh's greatest art venue in the right hands and there have been many proposals to do so, including a new venue for the Queen's Hall, all blocked by the developers by various means.

All the council and their cronies care about is making as much money as possible short term by more bland homogenisation of the city. Fuck them. To me this is worse than Trump and his golf course.

Look here : http://www.scottishcinemas.org.uk/edinb ... index.html

Hooray! At last... those hordes of tourists camping out on Carlton Hill have a place to stay!

"Edinburgh's Royal High School set to rise again as £35m art hotel"

http://news.scotsman.com/scotland/Royal ... 6036933.jp

http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/ ... 6037674.jp

http://www.forthone.com/Article.asp?id= ... spid=25613