Support an Academic Future for Adam Smith's House (updated)

Below I have reproduced the whole of a message from Gavin Kennedy's blog Adam Smith's Lost Legacy (A very interesting blog if you want to learn about Adam Smith). It is I think self explanatory:

URGENT: Support an Academic Future for Adam Smith's House in Edinburgh The closing date and time for the purchase of Adam Smith's "Panmure House" in Edinburgh (off the famous Royal Mile between the Castle and Holyrood Palace) is tommorow, Friday 4 April, 12 noon. Bids will be considered and decided upon by the City Council, probably by Tuesday (due to holidays).

It has been put on the market for sale by its current owners, Edinburgh City Council, and advertised as a 'development opportunity'.

The 'Panmure House Project' has been working away to raise awareness of the sale and to seek support for its purchase by a body that will restore it sympathetically as a 16th century building (the external building is in good condition) and as Adam Smith's home from 1778-1790.

The Panmure Poject's web site HERE contains links to 29 external and internal pictures of its current condition and you are invited to visit its webpages, and to pass the link to colleagues and friends.

The signed letter that has been sent to the City Council is on the Panmure Project web site site and you can email your agreement to add signatures to it for the second posting. Economists from various countries, including Scotland, of course, have already lent their support.

Please consider sending your named of support that can be mustered the more likely that the City Council will add to their criteria of a suitable purchaser the need to show that the restoration and the use of Panmure House will have significant 'public benefits'. Funding is being sought from private sources (no taxpayers' money is involved - as you would expect in Adam Smith's name!).

Such persuasion will likely be forthcoming from those intending to create in Panmure House a centre of academic excellence in Adam Smith and the Enlightenment, disseminating education in economics at all levels, from schools to university post-graduate, and as a centre within Edinburgh's most famous 'tourist' attraction, the Royal Mile, for increasing the awareness of Adam Smith's Works.

Adam Smith is buried 100 yeards from Panmure House and he worked at the Royal Exchange and Customs House (now Edinburgh's City Chambers) about 500 yards up the hill in the High Street, opposite which, on the 4th July, a 20-foot statue of Adam Smith will be unveiled. The date is auspicious given Adam Smith's empathy with the case of the British colonists in America up to 1776, when Wealth Of Nations was first published.

Visit the web site of the Panmure Project HERE and please pass on the link as much and as far as you can.

Update: Eamonn Butler of the Adam Smith Institute comments on Adam Smith's house.