No doubt with greatly improved cycle condition on the roads at Cameron Toll/Lady Road + extra cycle parking.
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » General Edinburgh
"A HUGE expansion of the Cameron Toll shopping centre..."
(26 posts)-
Posted 13 years ago #
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Using car park land - what about the poor motorists?
Posted 13 years ago # -
Ha, first comment has asked where cars are going to park, given the extention is going to be to the south of the existing building. I imagine they'll build ugly mutlistory carpark to the east and west.
Posted 13 years ago # -
There could be a railway station close by...
Posted 13 years ago # -
No Chdot, surley that would be too sensible. They may aswell open up the South sub if they were to put a station there.
Posted 13 years ago # -
Last time I cycled past there I was at the front left side of an ERC group. The rider on my outside turned left at the bottom of Dalkeith Road. I had to turn to avoid him and the two of us went off down to the shopping centre while the rest of the group went on towards Gilmerton.
Posted 13 years ago # -
Interestingly Gyle centre also expanding onto carpark land. Perhaps they've realised either they just dont need that much, that they can make more money if the empty swathes of tarmac have shops on them paying rates, that people need to shop anyway even if they can't drive, or that maybe not everyone wants/needs a washing machine every time they pop to Savacentre.
Posted 13 years ago # -
Savacentre
Heh, that takes me back.
I remember when they were building it, thinking it was the most futuristic building I'd ever seen, all angles and tinted glass. The neon tube was so hi-tech looking that it was surely delivered by a time machine.
Posted 13 years ago # -
IT is a time machine indeed. Step inside and you're right back in the early 80s :)
Posted 13 years ago # -
My mum worked in Savacentre when I was very young. I have some early memories of going to pick her up in the middle of winter, my brother and I in my dads old Volvo that didn't have any heater wrapped in a tartan rug admiring the red band round the building. As I got older I wished it would hunt like a cylon or KITT
Back on topic, Asda cheser has also expanded into the car park, building a petrol station, and the Corstorphine Tesco did similar when it expanded a few years ago.
I wonder if retailers are realising they can't possibly meet peak parking demand (Christmas) so they might as well use the land mor efficiently the rest of the year when the car parks have a much lower utilisation.
Posted 13 years ago # -
"...Asda Chesser has also expanded into the car park..."
Newhaven looks like it's merely biding its time before it does the same with that fenced-off section of car-park, which at the moment is only used by people who can't be bothered to drive up to the car park by Dunsapie Loch to smoke.
Posted 13 years ago # -
Or they've realised that shoppers will park where and how they like anyway on side streets / double yellows / infront of fire stations - so they can reduce their parking capacity, increase store size and still they will come and load up on cheap washing machines.
Posted 13 years ago # -
I worked in Safeways at Cameron Toll when the centre first opened. (In fact it was the first big supermarket in Scotland ever to open on a Sunday.)
Most exciting day was when the culvert got blocked with a cable drum so the Braid Burn flowed through the shops instead.
We used up all the cat litter on the shelves that day but it was no good.....
Posted 13 years ago # -
Or they've realised that shoppers will park where and how they like anyway on side streets / double yellows / infront of fire stations
My observation is that if the shopper can't get within 10m of the door they drive to the next supermarket.
Posted 13 years ago # -
I can't see what this development is going to achieve, really, except for a lot more penniless/bored teenagers hanging around the shopping centre at night. The centre has vacant shops as it is, how on earth will the extra ones be filled as well? It's going to crash and burn in double quick time.
Posted 13 years ago # -
@cc probably increases the book "value" of the site
@Steveo "My observation is that if the shopper can't get within 10m of the door they drive to the next supermarket."
You forgot the bit where they drive round and round in circles for a half hour first, ignoring the pile of empty spaces within 50m of the door, just incase they might get one closer.
Posted 13 years ago # -
"You forgot the bit where they drive round and round in circles for a half hour first ..."
You obviously spend too much time in supermarket car parks!
Choose Life: Choose Cycling.
Posted 13 years ago # -
@chdot I have worked in them! Rite of passage. It was that or Burger King!
Posted 13 years ago # -
Savacentre has two car parks, what with home deliveries and the Internet that is one car park too many. What else can you do to a shopping mall that is low cost and might yield a return except build more shops?
I cite the entire town of Livingston which is basically a very large shopping centre with some houses. They charge a pound to park in the car parks now, tho you can find free parking further away from the shops.
Was there a safeways and a sainsburys at one point or did one turn into the other? one time as students we went there and did a supermarket shop as we had tired of rotten fruit and vegetables from argyle place and wm low was shut for the night, yes they used to close about half past five six o'clock, late til seven on a Thursday, shelve stacking til ten which was considered late at night. so the savacentre introduced later shopping. 'twas a summer evening so after filling our rucksacks we decided not to take bus back to marchmont and set off across country. Took a curious farm road blackford glen road darkness fell and we got lost, made a bivvy from the poly bags, little campfire, ate the provisions, next day discovered we were in the hermitage of braid. Duh, students, eh. Cameron Toll was also where boroughmuir high was to be rebuilt, this never happened as the shops went up instead but they kept the weird catchments that had been drawn up. These have finally been sorted so b-muir students no longer have to walk past James gillespies, the fights were ferocious, one student's propelling pencil was badly damaged in a particularly serious incident. Now they go to gillespie's
Posted 13 years ago # -
@kaputnik - splendid work. I don't think I'll be venturing out of my wee Grange/Marchmont/Meadows cycling comfort zone any time soon, judging by the appalling state of what might once have been cycle paths elsewhere in the city. Here's hoping things get better, although really they seem to just get worse and worse.
@gembo - Safeway had a supermarket at the south end of Cameron Toll, in addition to the main Sainsburys ne Savacentre. It closed some years ago and was partitioned into smaller shops. Sainsburys at one point was open 24 hours a day. That didn't last long.
I love your Hermitage of Braid story!Posted 13 years ago # -
I lived in Inch House for around 6 years before and after the building of Cameron Toll. I worked in the Community Centre for 18 years. I remember the first time it flooded. Looks like the new flood defence work has done them no favours whatsoever. They used to joke that you if you applied for a job in Savacentre you had to have a bronze medallion.
This looks more like a scene from the Lord of The Rings. I would have taken more photos Saturday but I was on route to somewhere and I was pushed for time. Looks like the new Sports Hub investment has been dealt a real setback. I think they just spent a sizeable sum on the football and rugby pitches. This could also have an impact on the mountain biking that ERC run in the park.
Posted 13 years ago # -
Sorry forgot to post photo link.
Posted 13 years ago # -
Oh great, you have no idea how much I am looking forward to further disruption in this area. What a good idea extending the mall to back onto Inch Park and nearer to the Braid burn. It only took three years for the completion, it may have been longer but your memory fades with time, of the travesty and totally useless flood defences in Inch park. If the management of the park is anything to go by and said flood defences then I won't hold my breath on this being any sort of improvement. As cyclists you will not be able to get to the savacentre from the Inch park side to do your shopping but will have to use the Old Dalkeith Road itself or the Gilmerton/Liberton Road/Lady Road route...I find that car drivers already have so little time for cyclists around here as it is.
Posted 13 years ago # -
BTW I actually quite like the fact that ALL of the other shops other than Sainsbury's shut at 6 to 6.30, because the car park, and the place itself is empty virtually. I do my shopping either very early or late just to avoid the rest of the hordes/folk aimlessly and mindlessly wandering and milling around or standing around in groups blocking doorways eyeballing others or their mates just getting in the way. Oh, and I forgot to mention all the tatty stalls in the mall itself taking up loads of space making the place more of a crush than it has to be.
Posted 13 years ago # -
@tj - they could improve the park quite easily, move all of the soil that they have dumped by what was the old cricket pavillion to the other side by the flying fox and fill that huge dip in so that it does not flood there. They should have dug the burn deeper whilst they were at it, they should not have cut down all of the trees, and they should be planting more. It annoys me that the park is being turned into playing fields and nothing but playing fields. I like a park to have trees and shrubbery. There was talk at one point of planting reed beds at the bottom and having a wetland area, don't know what has happened to that idea. More built over, more tarmac less water absorption, so the more building they do around here the worse the problem is going to become, with far more run off...but hey who am I to say!!
Posted 13 years ago # -
@claggy Cog
I couldn't agree more with you. It appears that Inch Park is not part of flood plain, which it always was, before the new flood protection work. There is a long history of trees being cut down in this park. Apparently some oak trees were a hazard to a particular club that used the pitches to kick and carry an oval ball. On another occasion four mature Yew trees were felled. When challenged the response was that these four particular trees were a hazard to commercial vehicles moving in and out the Parks compound. When asked how a stationary object could be a hazard to vehicles no answer was forthcoming.
Perhaps Inch Park suffers from the fact that it does not have a friends of parks group like some other parks in Edinburgh. http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/info/542/volunteering-general_information/761/friends_of_parksPosted 13 years ago #
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