A bit shaky, but for goodness sake, we’re looking down on the big wheel on Princes Street.
I have no head for heights but last week I got a real kick out of climbing the 192 steps of that spindly monument in the middle of St Andrew Square to look down on the building site below. It was almost exactly four years to the day when I sat at my first meeting as a director of Edinburgh City Centre Management to hear an impassioned town planner describe how this private (and somewhat down at heel) garden could be transformed into a welcoming public space.
A lot of consultation has ebbed and flowed round the square since then but now it is really happening – the best thing the company has done while I’ve been on the board.
The great achievement of ECCM has been to start people talking about the need for more and better public space in Edinburgh. Castle Street was a start but St Andrew Square will be much better. By Easter next year there will be a coffee pavilion, maybe a water feature and places for people to sit in the sun and watch the world go by – I think it could be a really great place to hang out.
We had a bright and breezy afternoon for our site visit. A good day for taking pictures if only I had the nerve to stand at the edge of the platform so I could see beyond the scaffolding. (One member of our party was bold enough to climb to the higher platform where he could look Lord Dundas in the face and came down with a photo to prove it!).
I don’t have any pictures of the muddy patch below where the contractors are carving out a crescent for the water feature and a coffee pavilion is quickly taking shape. I’m hoping something else is going to grow out of the space so I will come back to that later. Meanwhile, the site manager is very proud of the transformation they are making: “Be sure you tell everyone about St Andrew Square.”
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