May 6 2025

A central Edinburgh office block is set to begin a new life as a hotel following the submission of plans for a 195-bed venue by Whitbread.

The Premier Inn owner proposes to reconfigure Capital House on Festival Square off Lothian Road, by investing £21m in remodelling its floorplates for short-stay accommodation.

Working with Lawrence McPherson Associates the hospitality specialists will rework the 65,350sq/ft building, including a ground floor restaurant and bar. Adopting an infill approach to bulk out the C-plan building with additional rooms without impinging on views, the architects will pursue a low-key approach that leaves it largely unchanged from primary vantage points.

In their design statement, LMA wrote: "The roofscape has been angled and sculpted to match the existing pitches, offering an inset area to house the required plant and services. The elevations would be further developed to hide the inherent modularity of the additional hotel accommodation, and keep the aesthetic more in line with the language of the existing building."

Opaque glazing will be used to hide partitions necessary for the new hotel rooms. 

3 Comments

#1 Posted by town planner on 6 May 2025 at 23:14 PM

Festival Square has promised much over the years, the unbuilt Richard Murphy Film House most notably, so in that context a new Premier Inn is a bit underwhelming.

#2 Posted by Mark on 7 May 2025 at 22:18 PM

It's possibly just as well that the Film House remains unbuilt, it sat rather uncomfortably in the square.

#3 Posted by town planner on 8 May 2025 at 20:06 PM

Respectfully disagree Mark. I liked RM's original scheme and then the second iteration too. When you consider the location of FS directly opposite the Usher Hall with views to Edinburgh Castle/ super close to Princess Street etc the buildings on two of the three sides of the square are subpar. I would include the Sheraton in that too, which looks pretty tired, and when compared to some Sheratons in other UK cities I think their Edinburgh effort ain't great. Tbh I had long hoped that Capital House may be demolished or remodelled in a more comprehensive way than this, all in all, not the greatest outcome for the Edinburgh city centre.

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