Leith residents' anger at plans for new aparthotel

Edinburgh Evening News

A group of local residents are furious about plans to demolish a warehouse and build an aprarthotel. Eren Properties Scotland Limited want to demolish the empty warehouse at 254 Leith Walk and build a new 11 unit 29-bed ‘aparthotel’ with a sheltered woodland garden and secure bike store. Locals living on neighbouring Balfour Street are objecting to the proposed development at the back of their properties, due to fears that the two and three storey aparthotel will affect their privacy and leave their gardens in darkness

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00:00Erin Properties Scotland Ltd submitted plans at the end of May to demolish the empty warehouse

00:06at 254 Leaf Walk and build a new 11-unit, 29-bed apart hotel with a sheltered woodland garden

00:13and secure bike store. Locals living on neighbouring Balfour Street are objecting to the proposed

00:18development at the back of their properties. You don't have hair because there is everything,

00:25privacy, not much distance and too close privacy because everybody can see if you are in their

00:34home or what you are doing, you know. I don't want to live with the closed curtains because

00:40I'm a clusterfork worker, so it means I need to open the windows during the winter, sometimes

00:46in the night, so I don't want the people to check me all the time because it makes me more

00:51nervous. And what is it? The noise? I need to sleep because I work in care home with

00:59the dementia people, and so I need to relax. Erin is there anything you want to add? Just privacy

01:06privacy, and noise. I really worried that once it's built that obviously it will be just one giant

01:15airbnb. Yeah. They can call it whatever they want, but it's a giant airbnb and it's far too close, far too

01:21close to the other buildings for privacy light however you would the light this is the most

01:26important thing so we have the sun here in the afternoon yeah it means after there is no sun

01:32and the build they are old and they are very cool the building yeah so if we have a little sun

01:38sometimes you know you can be a little happy to see this i'm thinking about when there is no sun

01:44because there is a building and i was checking they have a sun there after no sun everywhere

01:50because there is a bigger building

01:54with the current one story warehouse the same height as the wall at the back of the balfour street

02:00properties residents are concerned that the three story apart hotel would leave their gardens in

02:05darkness and a local councillor went along to hear their concerns i think the local residents have

02:11raised really valid concerns about the appropriateness of this development the development itself seems

02:16very close to existing tenements and when you look around an area you can see new developments are

02:21usually set back quite a lot from ten minutes which gives some open space some air some breathing room

02:26and most importantly at all some privacy i'm quite concerned that that's that's not going to be the

02:31case with this development so that's why i came here to learn a bit more about it today the plans will

02:36now be decided upon by the city of edinburgh council's planning department with 56 objections received so far

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