Dynamic lighting brings Granton Gasholder Park to life
July 1 2025
A towering industrial relic in Granton has been shown in a new light with the completion of a £20m restoration and regeneration initiative.
Granton Gasholder Park has transformed the northern skyline of Edinburgh by repurposing the 165ft tall structure into a beacon for broader waterfront regeneration.
Optimised Environments, Tetra Tech and Thorn Lighting have transformed the site into the city's newest public space, harnessing the power of light to showcase the sculptural quality of the 1901 gasholder.
The new look includes oversized Corten steel lettering and high contrast floodlights mounted directly on the structure with concealed cables, which can be programmed for specific scenes and events.
Lighting columns are also used to pick out pathways after dark Illuminating all 100,000 rivets and 26 columns, the project also includes walking trails, play areas and a central sculpture of a breaching humpback whale.
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16 Comments
At a tenth of the price it would have been an unbelievable waste of public money.
Haven’t met a single person who likes it.
Who gets away with making these awful decisions?
£20M of public money wasted
Change is needed
Can you provide a link to where you got that info?
Mentioned on page 10 of the Levelling Up application: https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/downloads/file/30144/levelling-up-fund-application-form
Suggesting that quantity of levelling up money was dependant on spending an eyewatering £20,000,000 on the redundant gas holder is ridiculous.
Where has the rest of the £1,180,000,000 been spent?
You are misunderstanding. It was a legal requirement of the Council acquiring the site from National Grid that it restore the Gasholder. This was a condition of sale. The Council subsequently secured Levelling Up funding towards the restoration works.
https://www.nationalgrid.com/document/127916/download
£1.3 billion is the projected value of the wider Granton regeneration. Again, this would not have been possible without the restoration of the Gasholder.
In fact, we were told, and local residents overwhelmingly supported it. There's always a cost attached to these things and as you'll know, its often very expensive to work with heritage assets. Considering the initial regeneration area along Waterfront Avenue was to be served by the trams, this represents a significant saving on the likely costs of fulfilling that part of the brief today.
Glad to see the area finally benefitting from some placemaking investment.
"Placemaking investment" LOL.
Nobody goes there.
#11
"It was a legal requirement of the Council acquiring the site from National Grid that it restore the Gasholder."
That sounds like deal of the century for National Grid!!! They must have had a lot of champagne that night. FFS.
Surely we can do better than this, not even an interesting scheme in any way, shape or form.
The £20m was spent on stabilising and repairing the structure.
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