SecretLeeds - History, culture and architecture in Leeds

On the Evening Post web site they have anounced that building work on Lumiere has been halted due to the credit crunch ! I wonder if this means work will be stopped forever on this project and if it is how long will we have this great scar (where work has already started) in the ground in the centre of the city ?    

Well I wish someone would tell the contractors then as I drive a bus and our main route into the city is along Whitehall Rd, the are still getting in the way with their lorrys coming and going all day.

Well, I drive a bus on there too, from the railway station, and I noticed that they took the piledriving machinery away on Monday, well before they should have done..But if you look at all the building sites in Leeds city centre at the moment, towercranes, and machinery, is being removed from site daily..Hmm, are we going to be left with these "scars" in the city centre for a few years???

Seems a funny way to go about things, to me...according to Look North last night, the complex is to consist of 900 flats. 600 of these have already been sold, and they're going to continue to try to sell the remaining 300, but they can't give any assurances as to when (or if) the thing will be finished...

On Look North tonight says project has closed down for 18 monthsI wonder if they are going to reopen the footpath which they closed?         Can anyone tell me how they have managed to close a footpath and not made alternative safe passage for pedestrians.Someone is going to get killed walking on Wellington Street past this site.I find it incredible that this has been allowed to go on for a few months now.

My wife works just around the corner and says the building work has caused chaos in the area. Thats not to metion the traffic chaos on surrounding roads, plus lots of local shop / bar / cafe owners have been very vocal about the negative impact on trade. I guess they won't be too unhappy that work has stopped.While the building would have been iconic, would you have actually wanted to live there? Only recently the plans were altered to lower the ceiling heights to get more floors in and the vast majority of apartments were planned to be one bedroomed.It's a million miles away from New York style lofts or penthouse suites for most of the expected occupants.On the news tonight it was said that work is to be "suspended" once the foundations are completed. When will work be restarted? Who can say, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who remembers derelict building sites across the city centre for decades until relatively recently?Also on hold is the "Kissing Towers" development planned for Sovereign Street - older readers may like to think just how long this site has been an open air car park since the Queens Hall was demolished.Perhaps the credit crunch has opened a lot of peoples eyes to the fact these developments are little more than an overpriced repeat of the 60's high rise tower blocks that no-one has wanted to live in for decades? It was only a matter of time.

Well, driving my bus around the city centre today, I noticed that quite a few other, less well known developments appear to have also been put on hold, yesterday I was at the Highroyds Development at Menston, that too, has been put on hold now, indeed the developer has canvassed the neighbours about letting some of the empty apartments to "DSS" tenants, you can imagine how thats gone down with the residents,( who've paid a lot of money for their apartments) and what they think of that idea!!??

chamusdarrach wrote: Well, driving my bus around the city centre today, I noticed that quite a few other, less well known developments appear to have also been put on hold, yesterday I was at the Highroyds Development at Menston, that too, has been put on hold now, indeed the developer has canvassed the neighbours about letting some of the empty apartments to "DSS" tenants, you can imagine how thats gone down with the residents,( who've paid a lot of money for their apartments) and what they think of that idea!!?? Can you imagine that?You've spent a small fortune on your new house an "executive" development, then found out it used to be a mental hospital. This is on top of it taking you an age to get to work in Leeds as the roads simply can't cope with all the additional traffic this and other developments have caused. The trains are no better as they are crammed full and stop everytime the Aire floods at Kirkstall, which seems to be everytime there is heavy rain.Then building work stops and your luxury home is marooned between a building site and a partially demolished mortuary. The credit crunch takes hold and your home is suddenly worth a lot less than you paid for it when you took out your 125% mortgage with Northern Rock. Then the developer rings up and asks if you've any objection to them housing a couple of hundred DSS tenants next door...

My apologies to Hats Off - whilst queing on Whitehall rd today I spoke with the guy standing guard on the gate to the site - it has indeed been shelved and the only work going on at the moment is site and equiptment clearence.Concidering the Wellington Plaza project has also crashed thats a lot of land doing nothing now along the Whitehall Rd corriodor

The development on East Street has been on hold for a while too, the one with the big £99.000 sign on the side. About time they built something to benefit the people of Leeds and then it may get built and finished.