Musings.

[tyke bhoy]

munki wrote: Oh yeah, the Car Park thing! I am glad someone else has noticed that maddening / infuriating habit that so many people have! Has anyone noticed that the car parks at the White Rose Centre are actually DESIGNED so that you CAN'T walk through them? Fences & hedges built to drive you into the shopping centre, so that you HAVE TO walk past the shops / products in order to get back to your car? The White Rose possibly isn't a good example. I can't think of any reason to park there other than to part with the moola. there is the waterside walk which presumably was included to appease the council planning committee but though it is shielded from the car park you can't take away that it has magnificent views of .................................the ringroadI do agree though that there are parts of the City Centre where I do feel initmitated for daring to venture with the audacity of not wishing to make a purchase

[munki]

Yes, the White Rose is not a good example... of anything! For personal reasons my feelings about the White Rose Centre & its neighbouring Arlington Business Centre are so negative that I really would get in trouble for articulating them here! Earn your money in a soul-less, airless office, then spend it at lunchtime in a soul-less, airless neon temple to all that is wrong with capitalism... The Graveyard of the Human Soul*.* The views expressed above do not in any way reflect the views of Leeds City Council.

[simonm]

Well said Munki!!! However, it's a sad fact of todays living i'm afraid, especially in our car crash, MTV world. Here in the UK and the states and heritage and sould is gradually being washed away in a tide of easy living. While i went back to uni to study further a decade or so ago, I worked in Asda on an evening to keep the mortage paid. this young woman had a right go at me cos we didn't have any grated cheese!!!! I mean, FFS, she went even more balistic when I suggested a lump of decent stuff and cheese grater. Individuals are smart and intelligent, yet the people of the UK, as a whole are being fed this non stop dross, ie big brother etc and are gradually being dumbed down and now happily accept the so called "malls" as the norm. Not only shopping but allsorts in eveyday living.It'll only get worse as well. The population as a whole now has to be told and follows like sheep!!    

[Trojan]

simonm wrote: Well said Munki!!! However, it's a sad fact of todays living i'm afraid, especially in our car crash, MTV world. Here in the UK and the states and heritage and sould is gradually being washed away in a tide of easy living. While i went back to uni to study further a decade or so ago, I worked in Asda on an evening to keep the mortage paid. this young woman had a right go at me cos we didn't have any grated cheese!!!!     It's like the report on the "Little Chef" waitress who said that they'd run out of omlettes. They had eggs, but no there were no omlettes - the omlettes came frozen from their head office!

[wiggy]

Trojan wrote: simonm wrote: Well said Munki!!! However, it's a sad fact of todays living i'm afraid, especially in our car crash, MTV world. Here in the UK and the states and heritage and sould is gradually being washed away in a tide of easy living. While i went back to uni to study further a decade or so ago, I worked in Asda on an evening to keep the mortage paid. this young woman had a right go at me cos we didn't have any grated cheese!!!!     It's like the report on the "Little Chef" waitress who said that they'd run out of omlettes. They had eggs, but no there were no omlettes - the omlettes came frozen from their head office! well said simonm! no argument this side...i wish you could have a word with my three.

[chameleon]

This is certainly stimulating some emotive thoughts Munki - you've started something here!Way back in the 70's, the Unitary Development Plan of the day illustrated the long term proposal to shift the emphasis of the retail sector south towards and across the river. Many factors have changed during the last 30 years - who then, would have thought that inner-city living would reach the proportions it has.Slowly but surely though, the move is creeping onwards. The new breidge across the river at Whitehall is intended to link Granary Wharfe and the canal basin to the new 'village' - no longer simply the expected retail developments, but mixtures of retail, residential, offices, amenity support services as well as more hotel accommodation and recreation (more of the seemingly inevitable bar/restaurant/ health club/ token green space phenomina). This area between the river and wellington street is changing rapidly and the change will be extensive. Even the once 'see for miles view' from my office has diminished as we all become encased in this new culture of progress.The comments made in the threads above illustrate that people go from A to B, making their purchases and taking their recreation from facilities along the way. Venturing off at a tangent is a rarity (how many people have entered the Bond Street Shopping Plaza from City Square and turned left to end up in the basement of Zavvi (Virgin) and seen the shops along there? Very few I suspect, because it doesn't 'go' anywhere.This is the problem presently with Granary Wharfe. The perhaps, novelty of this, wore off. Couple this with improvements which diluted its character, and people stopped going there. Perhaps when the thoroughfare is completed through the basin, life will return.One has to wonder if this fate will descend upon the aging Merrion Centre. Already the top end seems to be dying, fewer people passing that way, the mini market virtually gone. I wonder how making it a 'closed' centre (locked up at night) will affect things - that already contributing to the loss of the lamented Bar Phono?These changes are insiduous, often so slow that they are unnoticed until complete - by then our influence has gone.

[electricaldave]

The issue for future Leeds retail development is probably closely connected to things such as transport links.Back in the 1960's, and no doubt before then, you came into Leeds on the bus or the train, and your shopping trip would be determined by where your bus ended and started.So if you came from East Leeds, you'd shop mostly around Kirkgate as both your incoming and outgoing buses came and went from there, after all, its a good old walk from down there to, say, the top end of New Briggate and then to walk all the way back down laden with bags to pick up your bus on New York Street.If you came from North West Leeds and all points between, Cookridge, Tinshill, Ireland Wood, Headingly, Hyde Park, then you'd get off the bus near the Merrion Centre, or just outside the then Lewis's, and your shopping trip would be a downhill run through Schofields, Commercial Street, and generally toward the main market, and you would pick up your bus from the bus station down the bottom end.I'm sure that shopping routes could be generated for folk from Meanwood, or from Horsforth.The spread of retail outlets must take account of the methods that the shoppers will take to get into their zone, nowadays not as many of us use the buses, so it will have to depend upon where the main car parks are and how difficult it is to get to them.The train station is ideal for some shoppers, but not for most, and not many shopper friendly bus routes take passengers around the granary wharf area, and there aren't all that many car parks around there either.Another option is to bring the shoppers to the shops, in other words build lots of housing in central Leeds, and it does appear that this is what is happening down Wellington Street and also that large development at Leeds Bridge (someone will have to remind me what its proper name is)I think the Merrion centre is suffering from the reduced amount of bus passengers from the North side of Leeds, the further outreaches are fairly affluent and these have their own transport, so they will drive right into Leeds and never go anywhere near the place, others probably go to the large retail parks.Perhaps when the Allders development is done it will draw more shoppers through the Merrion Centre, but to be honest , I'd expect most of them will only get as far as wandering around the St John centre.I'm sure that any town planner worth their salt will have been looking at this for some years now. but I think Chameleon is dead right about the Merrion end of Leeds, because this is part of a shopping zone that could bring passing shoppers through it and on to either the Grand Arcade area and down Briggate, or though St Johns, however I simply do not imagine shoppers travelling the other way, and actually when you look at the direction of pedestrians, you'll notice that the vast majority goes from the Merrion centre on down, and very little the other way - back up the hill.I really do think the Merrion Centre needs a big rebranding job done, with some major attraction, perhaps some work needs to be done on the car park too.

[tyke bhoy]

The developments near Leeds bridge are on or around Brewery Wharfe but I suspect you possibly mean the completed but slightly further afield Bridgewater Place. That's already relegated to 2nd highest by Plaza II off the top of claypit lane (although only its central supports have reached the 37 floors. I suppose you could also mean Criterion but I am not even sure if that's going ahead let alone any start..I've mentioned before, its rather strange that the Merrion Centre has not allowed anything other than very short term lets on the Georgian arcade for around a decade now. So its little wonder not much surrvives above the concourse that has Morrisons, boots and Woolworths amongst others. Agreed though its a bit of a trek unless parking in the merrion or Woodhouse lane muli storeys or on the Otley road bus routes.

[rikj]

TCS seem committed to the Merrion Centre as refurbishment of large parts of it are well under way. Morrisons has just had a major revamp as well, I can't find a thing in there anymore!As noted in this thread, new student hives are springing up nearby, so the student pound must be in the owners' eyes. I agree that the trade comes from the Otley Road corridor, but I'd say that the bus traffic is increasing, not decreasing, once again new services for students.One of the next major impacts on the development of Leeds will be along the A65 corridor. Already we have; - Little Woodhouse Student Village (5000 bedspaces) - YCL and ARLA sites are being demolished ready for development. - Thomas Waide printers site in Kirkstall, large development - Abbey Mills, massive housing proposed - Kirkstall Forge site. All in all the whole of the Kirkstall Valley corridor is being eyed up for massive development. What's holding it back is transport infrastructure.The other other factors in the "Axis of Retail" are the coming sale of Boddington Hall, within 4 years, and the proposed development of the Aire Valley beyond Thwaite Mills.    

[chameleon]

The newest bridge, Whitehall to somewhere, finally staying were it was put.