EDINBURGH is not exactly a stranger to film production, yet there is never any shortage of excitement when a movie crew rolls into town. Right now it feels as if Avengers Infinity War has taken over the city, with production trucks filling Parliament Square and the Holyroodhouse car park. Yet no-one seems to mind the inconvenience that comes with movie making.
It’s the same in Glasgow; close off a road for resurfacing or utility maintenance and there will be the usual grumbles. Shut down the city centre so Brad Pitt can go chasing zombies in a mock-up of Philadelphia and it’s a different story altogether. The public gets the value of cinema as an international showcase and a tourism magnet; it’s why they file through the gates of Disney World and the Universal theme parks every summer.
Pitt’s World War Z apocalyptic tosh was a critical turkey but a box office high-flyer, grossing over $500 million for a cost of $200m (£129m) and its with those kind of big bucks in mind that the Scottish Government is finally set to approve plans for a £250m studio complex on the outskirts of Edinburgh, more than two years since it was first mooted.
The principle of a major film production centre to act as a hub and magnet for creative industries of all sorts has been accepted for years, going back to plans to expand the Edinburgh Film Studios facility at Nine Mile Burn near Penicuik, although the Sean Connery-Sony scheme on land owned by David Murray at Gogarburn was dismissed by Edinburgh Council in the late 1990s as a trojan horse for house building.
The Pentland studio plan for a site at Straiton, not far from where Wallace Mercer dreamt of a stadium for the merged Hearts and Hibs, has been met with predictable howls of protest from the Green Party, which fears a “thin end of the wedge” threat to the Green Belt and claims there are other places the studio could go without actually identifying either the sites or the backers.
But this is a stretch of open land next to an Ikea, a Costco, Sainsbury, a retail park and the Bilston industrial estate, not to mention the Edinburgh City Bypass, which the developer will be committed to improving. Talks about a film academy tie-in with Napier University are also said to be at an advanced stage.
It is also an entirely private venture which will not require any public money, unlike the parallel plan for an expansion of the Wardpark Studios in Cumbernauld, where the Outlander series has been shot, which was granted planning permission last year but needs an injection of £4m from the Scottish Government.
A major employment opportunity on the Midlothian side of the dual carriageway, with projections of some 1600 new jobs, it represents one of the few major commercial projects in the Lothians which will not add pressure to rush-hour transport into Edinburgh. It has long been a criticism of housing policy in the region that Edinburgh has effectively outsourced its home-building to the neighbouring councils while the jobs remain in the city, placing road infrastructure under intolerable strain. This won’t alleviate the problems, but at least it can make a significant contribution to the local economy without creating more congestion inside the capital.
There will also be environmental protest about the new plan to build a fly-over at the Sheriffhall roundabout three junctions down from Straiton, again something which has been overdue for years.
These issues will not disappear, yet Edinburgh still struggles to produce a vision for the future which encompasses future prosperity through economic growth which also safeguards the direct interests of its communities. The result is needless delay and piecemeal development, with schemes going ahead through the appeal system without a proper framework for expansion, and neighbouring authorities ploughing their own furrows without heed for the wider implications. No wonder the Edinburgh City Deal wasn’t signed off before the election.
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