Peebles pulls in the home-buyers

Property, The Scotsman, 21 September 2000

The prohibitive property prices in Edinburgh’s housing market are boosting a string of recent residential developments in Peebles.

Set in beautiful Borders country, the bustling town is also in commuting distance of Edinburgh and Glasgow and their satellite towns and cities, and it has good public transport links.

A new hotel construction is currently underway nearby and an eighteen hole golf course is scheduled for later in the year, adding to the village’s attractions.

Houses are being snapped up at Persimmon Homes’ exclusive Ettrick Gait development at Cardrona Village, three miles from Peebles. And demand for the development from house hunters has increased in recent weeks.

Patsy McLaren, Sales Director of Persimmon Homes (East Scotland) Ltd, said: “Ettrick Gait is our best-selling site in the region. Cardrona Village is a sought-after location and with Ettrick Gait having such spectacular views of woodland and rolling hills, houses are literally being snapped up"

Persimmon’s Ettrick Gait is a development of 62 properties offering a range of six different house types - three and four bedroom semi-detached and detached houses and three bedroom bungalows.

Two new showrooms opened at Ettrick Gait earlier this year: the Shetland villa and the detached Harris. With integral double garage, the four bedroom Shetland is ideal for the larger family. Prices start at £140,000....

....This is the first new community to be established in the Borders for over two hundred years and offers an opportunity to live within commuting distance of Edinburgh and Glasgow while enjoying the views of the beautiful Cardrona Forest and the Tweed Valley.....

.....Also at Cardrona Village is Manor Kingdom’s Pinewoods development. The company is building 50 bespoke homes with prices starting at £217,250 and going up to in excess of £800,000 - definitely luxury new accommodation at the higher end of the range......

£40m village for millionaires attacked by irate locals

William Chisholm, The Scotsman, 7 September 2000

The creation of the first "millionaires’ row" in the Borders, with the most expensive houses ever built in the region, has been attacked by objectors who claim the scheme will do nothing for local people.

Builders Manor Kingdom in Peeblesshire are advertising five-bedroom homes costing up to £835,000, complete with electronically-controlled gates on an idyllic site at Cardrona by the banks of the Tweed.

The £40 million Cardrona project, the first new village to be developed in the Borders for 200 years, provoked widespread objections from local residents who described the plans as "the rape of the Tweed valley".

However, planning permission for 220 houses, a village centre, and an 18-hole golf course with top class hotel was granted, and house building is now well under way.

Five companies are providing a mixture of house types with the Manor Kingdom properties representing the last word in luxury. The three most expensive styles in the firm’s 50-house Pinewoods development range in price from £650,000 upwards.

A company spokeswoman yesterday denied the Manor Kingdom properties would be out of the financial reach of local people. Prices for bungalows at Pinewoods started at £217,000, and over half of the houses were of that type, she said.

But one of the leading opponents of the Cardrona scheme claimed the deluxe houses would not fit in with the properties already completed around the village green.

Glenda Morning, who helped organise the unsuccessful campaign to block the entire development, told The Scotsman: "They cannot hide the fact this is millionaires’ row and you will need to be a millionaire to afford one of the top-of-the-range homes. This is not catering for locals because hardly anyone in the area will earn that kind of money in a lifetime."

She believed hopes of creating a new community at Cardrona would be damaged by houses hidden behind electric gates. Ms Morning added: "This is sheer class distinction." Dr Lysbeth Duncan, another Cardrona objector, said: "We said at the time this would not be a village at all, but an elite community for outsiders. These Manor Kingdom houses will be kept away from the riff-raff in a kind of millionaires’ enclave and the people who will occupy them don’t make a village."

The most expensive Manor Kingdom houses have five bedrooms and stand in half an acre of landscaped gardens close to the golf course. They are fully enclosed and come with either a full-sized games room or a self-contained flat built over a triple garage.

The so-called Senator design has a turreted entrance with a curved staircase. The house has a drawing room, family room, and a library.

The company spokeswoman denied the development would become an exclusive preserve for mega-wealthy families.

She said: "People may have got the wrong impression, but in fact only two or three houses are in this £800,000 price range. Others are priced at £600,000 or £500,000, and there are properties in the £250,000 to £400,000 range.

"In every village there is a complete range of house types and, in the case of Cardrona, it was always known that Manor Kingdom would be constructing some of the more expensive properties. These are custom-built houses which adds to the price but there are standard family homes at Cardrona too."

She denied the "millionaires’ row" criticism, preferring "building superb houses in a superb setting".

The spokeswoman added: "We used to think £217,000 was a lot of money for a house, but property values have risen.

"We do have people moving into our Cardrona development from other places," she said, "but there are some wealthy local people who have also expressed interest."

Plans unveiled for new luxury hotel

The Courier, 18 February 1999

MacDonald Hotels plc, the Scottish-based hotel and leisure group, has lodged detailed plans for the development of a 150 bedroom, four star hotel at Cardrona near Peebles, in the Scottish Borders.

The planned £6.7 million development will form an integral part of the Cardrona project, complemented by the 18-hole championship golf course which is already under construction. The project would bring over 100 permanent new jobs to the area.

This Borders’ project has been under consideration since 1991 when Tom Renwick, Borders sheep farmer and businessman, first received outline planning consent. Planning permission for a hotel was originally granted at a site at Horsburgh Castle Farm with an amended application or he site, submitted and approved on November 10, 1997.

Detailed plans have now been submitted on the back of the planning consent already granted.

Controversial estate plan 'not viable without more houses'

William Chisholm, The Scotsman, 23 December 1998

An investigation on behalf of the original developers behind the plan to construct a village of 220 houses at Cardrona in Peeblesshire concluded the project would not be financially viable unless more homes were built, it emerged yesterday.

Oregon Developments, of Jedburgh, decided to press ahead with the £40 million scheme contrary to the commissioned report’s advice but went into receivership before work began.

Miller Homes replaced Oregon as the lead developer of the project on 340 acres of Borders farmland and opponents claim the firm will be forced to seek planning permission for at least 400 houses to make the project pay.

Objectors to the scheme, who form the Cardrona Village Objectors’ Group, claim to have documentary evidence that permission for additional houses will be sought.

John Merry, who was a director of Oregon who opposed his firm’s plans two years ago, maintains that the project as it stands is still not viable. He later bought part of the business from the receivers.

Mr Merry said the market testing exercise determined that the 220 houses - the maximum number that can be built under current planning consents - would have to sell for £220,000 each to be financially viable. He said: “It was obvious the scheme did not stack up for at no time has the market in the Peebles area supported house prices on that scale. In my view the project with 220 houses was never viable and is not viable now.”

He added: “I have a strong suspicion that Miller Homes will go to the council and ask for 440 houses instead of the current approvals.”

Miller Homes was contacted for comment. However, a rebuttal of the protesters’ claims came from the owner of the land, Tom Renwick, issued through the housebuilder. Miller Homes declined to comment on its own behalf when asked to outline its future intentions for Cardrona.

Mr Renwick said: “I have to say that I am astounded at the comments made by John Merry regarding the viability of the proposed Cardrona village. Mr Merry was a director of Oregon Homes at the time they offered to buy the whole housing site just before Oregon went into liquidation.

“I’m not sure I would put too much emphasis on Mr Merry’s assessment of what is viable. Furthermore, proposals have been refined considerably since his involvement.”

Mr Renwick reaffirmed that he had a rigid planning consent for only 220 homes at Cardrona. The viability of that number had been tested both by Miller Homes and independent financial advisers. All agreed the project was viable.

He said: “There is no way we will allow an elitist style development favouring only those who can afford properties in the £200,000-plus price bracket.”

Now the protest group is also taking advice on whether the planning process, which has taken ten years, can be legally challenged.

Glenda Morning, speaking for the protesters, said: “We were told at the outset that Cardrona was to be a tourist-led project. But now we learn the golf course will be seasonal and the golf club will be housed in the proposed hotel. We have even been misled over the promise of new jobs because they will be part-time.”

Alistair Rae, another active member of the group, claims an inquiry is needed to determine why councillors have been so keen to drive the project forward in the face of overwhelming opposition.