The City of Edinburgh council planning committee have finally granted planning permission for the construction of the long awaited Edinburgh skatepark at Saughton Park in the West of the city. The project has been almost 9 years in the making with numerous people involved over that time. Two false starts in the Meadows and Inverleith park delayed the project but the experience gained by the team during this time proved invaluable in the winning of this application.
We enjoyed the support of the vast majority of the local community groups, the full backing of the council, the press in the latter stages and the local Police. As ever a small minority have disagreed with the application siting noise and anti-social behaviour as their main objections but we are extermely confident that noise will not be an issue and the skatepark will enhance the area giving the locals more to do.
We will now work towards fine tuning the design whilst the tender is opened up to interested contractors. All going to plan we should get building in the spring of 2009 with the park completed in the summer. The wait has been a long one but the end result will be something special.