Arsing around or arson around?! - New Park Fire

[Frank]

Frank reports

So, sitting in the room this afternoon drinking tea, I look up and gaze out the window. I try to do this once a day, at least. There before me was nothing less than a gargantuan plume of smoke! From the window to the plume lay most likely:
- The Botanic Gardens
- The primary school beside them
- Lade Braes/Houses nearby
- The old abandoned Newgate (Correction: New Park) school (just off Lade Braes/beside the path which you'd walk along to cross from Fife Park to Aldi/Morrisons quickly)

So, in the spirit of all things adventurous, I hatted up and set off to investigate. I now provide you with a pictographic summary of my adventures!

Proof of concept:

The event itself:

Another view:


In potentially unrelated news, not long after the return to my room, many sirens sounded again. Rushing down Largo road were nothing less than a police van and three ambulance/medic-car-things.

An intriguing afternoon. My only 'on site report' of information I can give is that I overheard a lady say in hushed tones to someone else "I heard they saw folks running away".

[Guest]

Where is this exactly?

[donpablo]

Nice report. I saw 3 fire engines, a police car and a fire car (I guess you call it that?) pass me on the way home. The police were just closing off Hepburn Gardens when I got close enough to see what was happening, so I have nothing to add of any value. I could see the plume of smoke from right in town and quite far out of it. Seemed to die down about 6 so I guess theyve taken care of the fire by now. Hopefully find out more in the hours and days to follow.

[Fawksie]

New Park School. Second photo was taken from hereabouts, I reckon.

[James.C.]

I would normally be living just around the corner when back in st andrews but decided to come home before grad week. Always wondered if they were going to do anything with that space, guess someone decided they would...

[DACrowe]

Guess someone decided they would...

Allegedly.

Does anyone know who owns it? If it was derelict then an alleged insurance job isn't implausible, allegedly.

Note to self - Must get a better source for libel law than Have I Got New for You.

[guest123]

Although this is probably unconnected, I know that a number of students have recently been having night parties and drinking events in the old school, but since this was during the daytime in the Summer I doubt it was a drunken accident.

I'm glad I got a chance to have sneak around it whilst very drunk one evening before this happened. It was such a spooky building, lots of ghoulish blood over the place in the baths etc.

[Fawksie]

I presume it's owned by St Leonards School. Probably not the kind of organisation that has to worry too much about selling it as soon as possible, they're bound to be rolling in money surely?

Always thought it would make a decent site for the affordable housing so deeply beloved of and so vehemently opposed by St Andrews Community Council. They're all for it until it gets built somewhere they don't personally like.

Might work as a hall of residence too, though again I think the NIMBY planning committee would prefer any such development to take place on the Fife Park/DRA site where they don't have to look at or listen to students or their nasty out-of-character buildings (On that note, how'd the New Arts Building get passed? And has it got a name yet?).

[DACrowe]

Might work as a hall of residence too, though again I think the NIMBY planning committee would prefer any such development to take place on the Fife Park/DRA site where they don't have to look at or listen to students or their nasty out-of-character buildings (On that note, how'd the New Arts Building get passed? And has it got a name yet?).

Do people live in the arts building? No. There's the answer. The obstructionist members of the planning committee, echoing the residents association, are mainly 'concerned' with too many of the houses in the town centre being occupied by students whom they don't feel properly form part of the community. They have less objection to student accommodation being built in purpose-built units outside of the town centre and no objection at all to university buildings in which no one actually lives. Or so I'm told. Where this gets a bit crazy is when they would prefer, for example, the Castle site to lay dormant than that it be converted into flats where students might live. Why those same people are so enamoured with HMO licensing I've never been able to fully grasp either (you'd think houses being lived in by three students would be better than houses being lived in by two, assuming the same number of students in the university; less student homes).

[Ian Sutherland]

On that note, how'd the New Arts Building get passed?

Do people live in the arts building? No. There's the answer.

Part of the answer. I think an additional factor was being next to the library and the idea that anything would be OK next to that fine example of 1970s architecture.

However, I find the new arts building much more distasteful than the library. Both are ugly buildings, but the library at least has a certain monstrous dignity, its ugliness simply being a consequence of undisguised engineering decisions. The new arts building's ugliness is due to the kind of bland tastelessness one usually finds in, say, the offices of an accountancy firm.

[Fawksie]

I quite agree on that point, I always rather liked the library as a building on its own, though it is terribly out of place. They flung up a set of office buildings in Tollcross around the same time the arts building was completed that came from the same glass-and-sandstone prefabricated box mould, and they're dire looking.

[Frank]

As an aside, I hear tale by way of CSI Fife that there were indeed injuries yesterday, though no other details yet on that. I nipped back past it on my way home from work today and there's a rather fetching 'police line do not cross' thing put up.

Also, yep, Fawksie, that's pretty much the spot I'd have been at.

[5HT]

I presume it's owned by St Leonards School. Probably not the kind of organisation that has to worry too much about selling it as soon as possible, they're bound to be rolling in money surely?

Always thought it would make a decent site for the affordable housing so deeply beloved of and so vehemently opposed by St Andrews Community Council. They're all for it until it gets built somewhere they don't personally like.

Might work as a hall of residence too, though again I think the NIMBY planning committee would prefer any such development to take place on the Fife Park/DRA site where they don't have to look at or listen to students or their nasty out-of-character buildings (On that note, how'd the New Arts Building get passed? And has it got a name yet?).

St Leonards certainly isn't rolling in it... they had to sell Hepburn house (not near hepburn gardens but the old community hospital) to stop the place folding, it was crippled with debt, things are improving but I believe they are still in debt, certainl not rolling in it.