David J Black

A mere few months have passed since Keir Starmer, chancellor Rachel Reeves, and trade minister Peter Kyle victoriously announced that they had secured a magnificent £150 billion deal for Britain during Donald Trump’s royal wooing at Windsor.

Among the more eye-catching investments was a deal with Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager with $12.5 trillion assets under management. The global behemoth was founded by multi-billionaire Larry Fink, a Democrat and devoted family man, who, for two years or so, enjoyed a partnership with another plutocrat, Trump-supporting Stephen Schwarzman. The latter famously gave an endowment to New York Public Library which enabled him to put his name over the door – it is now the Stephen Schwarzman building. Messrs Fink and Schwarzman allegedly fell out in 1994.

Blackrock had already established a token presence in Edinburgh, occupying the former printworks of R&R Clark at 20 Brandon Street, and it also co-owns Edinburgh Airport, but the new arrangement was to be on an altogether different scale. It was to allocate around $7 billion in the wider UK market, and the focus was to be on the Scottish capital, where it took over the former Standard Life building at Tanfield, by Canonmills, almost doubling its workforce from 800 to 1,400. The Scottish government and Edinburgh Council were duly grateful, as one might expect.

Then came Blackrock’s moment of madness. It bought an option on the former premises of local solicitors Brodies, from current owners McLaughlin and Harvey of Belfast, which owned the four 1825 Georgian townhouses in Atholl Crescent. It then hit upon the singularly barbaric idea that their listed interiors should be hollowed out to enable the resulting voids to be converted into an 82 room ‘pod hotel.’ The neighbours were naturally horrified. It was a classic case of what Jane Jacobs, in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, would have referred to as a crass act of urbicide.

The very real and present danger in this case is that, given the overwhelming power and wealth of Blackrock, our councillors will be lying on their backs waiting to have their collective tummies tickled and give in to the New York multinational’s loutish scheme by granting it a planning consent in a spirit of unctuous gratitude, cultural vacuity, and political spinelessness.

Blackrock may then astonish us by destroying the Thomas Bonnar interiors of four listed townhouses at the West End of our city, an act of savagery a great deal worse than the demolition of the East Wing of the White House.

Pod hotels need not in themselves be an entirely bad thing. Debenham’s on Princes Street is currently being reconfigured as one, but there is a difference between an abandoned department store and a row of grand listed townhouse, let’s face it.

In thinking of a strategic approach to persuade Mr Fink to abandon his attempt to disfigure our UNESCO World Heritage Site we could, I daresay, cut up rough, and perhaps even take a few counter measures.

But perhaps we should adopt a more constructive approach in the hope that he might turn out to be a reasonable man who could, with any luck, be amenable to persuasion. The lord provost could be prepared to spend at least a morning with him, should Mr Fink happen to be passing through the city which he seems intent on destroying. There follows a suggested programme.

After he’s enjoyed a hearty breakfast in Prestonfield House Hotel, where Benjamin Franklin was a house guest of Sir Alexander Dick in 1759 and there were many earnest discussions about America’s drift towards revolution, the day could proceed. Much of the plotting took place in the hugger-mugger first floor coffee room, where the lord provost could join him for a coffee. Franklin even wrote a poem about his time there, Joys of Prestonfield Adieu, the original manuscript of which is kept in the hotel safe.

Joys of Prestonfield Adieu!
Late found, soon lost, but still we’ll view
The’ engaging Scene—oft to these eyes
Shall the pleasing Vision rise!

Over coffee they could chat about the fact that it was a man from Falkirk, George Walker, who invented Washington DC when he wrote a long article in The Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser in January 1789 in which he extolled the virtues of the site as the ideal north-south compromise for a Federal city.

Duly armed with this vital information, they could then set of on their Scottish-American tour by way of Europe’s first statue of Abraham Lincoln by George Bissell of New York, now in the Calton Cemetery. After that they could slowly drive past what used to be known as St James’s Square, which has a curious American connection. In 1773 wealthy Edinburgh lawyer Walter Ferguson commissioned the New Town architect James Craig to design a prestigious square of grand houses set around a garden. In 1775 there was a ceremony to launch the project, attended by ranks of Edinburgh builders, tradesmen, and officials. During this notable event the London coach arrived with the news that the British had sustained a bloody nose at the battle of Bunker Hill.

The Scots, as consummate contrarians, were sympathetically inclined to the patriot cause, and immediately re-christened the site ‘Bunker’s Hill’, and so it remained in the local street directory for several decades. Indeed many builders and tradesmen were members of a body known as ‘Congress’, and adopted such nom-de-plumes as Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin.

At this point the provost’s limo might proceed eastwards to 66 and 67 Queen Street, possibly designed by Robert Adam for the war hero Sir Ralph Abercromby, who fought valiantly against the French but refused to take up arms against the Americans, since he regarded them as kith and kin. His splendid town mansion was constructed by contractor Collen Williamson, who, with his brothers, completed the project, packed up their tools, and took passage for Washington DC, where their next job was to construct the White House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

From Queen Street it is but a short distance to Drumsheugh Gardens and the Bonham Hotel, where we could finish off with a coffee in the library. There are philanthropists, and there are philanthropists, and the late Richard Driehaus was in a class of his own. At the Bonham the Chicago founder of Driehaus Capital Managment LLC, who had funded a museum of art and design in his native city, embarked on a personal mission to make the Bonham into something special – and the result is spectacular.

Mr Driehaus’s aim was to create a townhouse of utmost luxury, and his approach was hands on. He acquired a vast amount of high quality furniture but above all it was his well informed choice of paintings which brought the place alive. Richard Driehaus’s curatorial skills were beyond masterly, and quality was his watchword. This is exactly the sort of thing Mr Fink should be doing with his four Georgian houses in Atholl Crescent, but can the lord provost persuade him?

Or will wealth-encrusted Blackrock persist in its feckless butchery, courtesy of a tummy tickled council? Perhaps an answer could be given by the demos in next May’s Scottish Parliamentary elections.