Artisan Real Estate Investors, the partnership driving Edinburgh’s £150 million New Waverley scheme, has underlined further commitment to the capital with another significant development deal.

The firm has bought the 22,000 sq. ft. Abbeyhill Industrial Estate, located just off London Road, currently home to companies including HSL, EKCO, The Electric Centre and the Edinburgh Festival Centre.

Artisan has also received planning permission for 180 high quality apartments for its Canonmills Garden scheme overlooking the Water of Leith, as part of a major regeneration of the former Warriston Road brownfield site.

The Canonmills Garden scheme is set reinvigorate a prominent brownfield site overlooking the Water of Leith. The design, by architects Sheppard Robson, has set four blocks around a tranquil garden square that will provide access to the one, two and three-bedroom apartments as well as maisonettes and townhouses, including a 25% provision for affordable homes.

Artisan’s Scottish-based asset manager, Charlotte Swanson, said the current investment activity underlines the company’s confidence in the Edinburgh and Scottish property market as a whole, buoyed by the successful delivery of the New Waverley scheme currently transforming the heart of the city’s Old Town.

Charlotte said: “The purchase of Abbeyhill represents a significant investment opportunity to add to our growing property portfolio across Scotland. It’s a high quality industrial estate with a good range of tenants and we look forward to redeveloping and growing its value over the coming years.

“Edinburgh, in particular, now represents a major share of Artisan’s UK investment holdings and we are looking forward to significant progress on all fronts during 2017, especially with the start of the next construction phase at New Waverley.”

Artisan’s footprint in the city is now well established following the success of the New Waverley development, which recently collected two prestigious national regeneration awards. The development scooped the award for the best city project in Scotland at the 2017 Scottish Property Awards, as well as being recognised for the best regeneration project at the recent Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) 2017 annual Scottish awards.

Both awards recognise New Waverley’s current status as one of the UK’s most important city-centre regeneration sites, taking place in the historic and highly sensitive World Heritage Site of Edinburgh’s Old Town.

Completed so far as part of the first New Waverley development phase are two Whitbread hotels - a Premier Inn and a Hub by Premier Inn - which opened in January 2016 and The Arches, a row of 19 Victorian arches which have been transformed to create an exciting new leisure and retail district for the city.

In December last year the new 146-apartment Aparthotels Adagio on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile opened for business, overlooking a new football pitch-sized public square, becoming the first significant public space to open in the city centre for more than 50 years.

As well as Edinburgh, Artisan is expanding its investment activity across Scotland with the purchase of the Cotton House in Glasgow city centre, a striking 52,000 sq. ft. office development in the heart of the Merchant City.