Byzantian Developments had first tabled plans in 2022 to knock down a listed building on Walmer Drive that’s been empty for more then a decade and replace it with 42 apartments.
The property was already derelict and a target for vandals when a fire ripped through the council’s former local office in the summer of 2023, prompting the application to be withdrawn last November and a revised scheme now put forward.
Their planning agent, Fraser / Livingstone Architects, explained: “Byzantian Developments have submitted updated plans to create new homes on an abandoned city centre site at Walmer Drive in Dunfermline.
“Formerly home to a Fife Council local office, the site has lain empty for many years, with the existing buildings now in a state of disrepair.
“As earlier proposals were progressing through planning, a destructive fire caused extensive further damage to the derelict existing buildings in the summer of 2023, including the collapse of roofs and upper floors.”
An image of what the new development on Walmer Drive could look like. (Image: Fraser / Livingstone Architects) READ MORE: Average price of a house in Dunfermline has rocketed by over £50,000 in a year
The property on Walmer Drive is an early 19th-century villa with a three-storey ‘wrap around’ extension added in the 1960s.
The council moved out in 2011 and the building has been vacant ever since.
The statement added: “Fraser/Livingstone Architects have now progressed revised proposals for 37 new homes for the steeply sloping, south-facing site that lies in the heart of the city’s historic conservation area.
“The walls of the original C-listed villa are retained as a built heritage remnant but repurposed to form a new entry court within a sequence of landscaped and parking terraces.
“Animating the city skyline, a cluster of three interconnected bronze-clad pavilions are held on a tiered masonry plinth, with apartments arranged to exploit extraordinary panoramic views south to the Forth Bridges, bringing folk back to live in the heart of the Auld Grey Toun.”
And here’s the possible view looking down Commercial School Lane. (Image: Fraser / Livingstone Architects) Previous plans to redevelop the site were refused in 2020.
Two Knights Developments, of Dalgety Bay, had outlined £3.3 million plans to turn the old offices into nine homes and build a new five-storey block with another 18 flats, but the council deemed this to be “overdevelopment”.
Two years later Byzantian stepped in. They are the firm behind the successful transformation of the derelict Dunlop factory on Pilmuir Street into the Linen Quarter, with attractive new apartments and retail space in the city centre.
Their original plans were to demolish the listed building and replace it with blocks of up to five storeys containing 42 apartments.
They had argued – even before the fire in July 2023 that caused even more destruction – that the villa had been altered and damaged so much that it wasn’t worth saving and should be knocked down.
,