Musings.

[raveydavey]

Am I proud to come from Leeds? Yes, of course I am!What do I feel about the city centre (or town, as it's properly called)?In the last decade or so, many independent and regional retailers have vanished, so now we have the same range of shops as, well pretty much any town centre does. From Inverness to Truro, its Costa Fortune, Pretentious a Manger, SubstandardWay, et al along with the same tired repetition of the same mobile phone shops, chain clothes shops and the same short term leased shops selling tat. I'm not so old that I can remember two giant department stores in the city centre that were 'ours' and ours alone, for exampleThe Corn Exchange offered something genuinely different, so obviously the insurance company that runs it kicked all the independent traders out and then couldn't get the 'specialist food outlets' that they wanted to fill the place. They are now reduced to begging the same people they kicked out to go back, but the damage is already done.I'm puzzled by the comments that the (currently shelved) Harewood Quarter was going to revitalise the city centre. Will it not be more of what we already have, with the usual extortionate multi-storey car park on the back? We already have a wealth of empty shop units in the city centre (and did have before the credit crunch started to bite) - have a wander throught the Bond Street or Schofields Centres for many examples. And given the distance of the Harewood Qtr from established shopping areas will it simply draw more people out of town instead? Instead of spending £millions on building more shops, why not use that money to offer incentives to fill the ones we've already got?I want to see the market flourish, but there has been a feeling that LCC officers have been trying to run it down since the 1980's with the rent increases, overly ambitious development plans and the over officious imposition of "the rules". Some of the older traders have packed up and gone and it's sadly another place with empty units and short term leases. Surely it's in the councils interests to have it full and thriving again? There are some fantastic small businesses operating in the market and this is what nees to be encouraged. In fact, the Market offers just about the only opportunity to get something in town that you can't get at the White Rose with it's free parking and everything under one roof (much as I dislike everything the White Rose stands for)I can't help but feel that the desire to close the Merrion Centre outside shopping hours has more to do with reducing security costs than anything else, to be honest.It also seems short sighted given the pending development of the Arena on land directly behind it. You only have to look at the regenerated Printworks in Manchester which lies directly between the MEN Arena and the town centre there - once run down and derelict, now a thriving complex with a cinema, bars and restaurants no doubt drawn by the passing crowds. With a bit of thought the Merrion could replace some of those empty shops with something that actually brings in additional footfall?And I've always viewed the St Johns Centre as somewhere to keep out of the rain as you walk up to the Merrion Centre, to be honest.Granary Wharf has always suffered from being a ten minute walk from the nearest shopping areas and not having any real transport links unless you actually parked there. My sister actually had a stall there in the 90's but increasing rents forced her out, as they did many others, which ultimately led to the demise of the place it had been. Perhaps the much discussed new entrance to the station will help, but I'm not so sure.We need a proper, joined up plan for the whole town centre (from the Aire to the Inner Ring Road) that encourages local entrepeneurs to take premises on and give us a thriving, bustling city centre and something exclusively Leeds.

[simong]

Excellent post raveydavey. One of the issues with the city council, in keeping with other cities in the country, is that they make appalling financial decisions. There's a documentary on Radio 4, I think as I type, about the local authorities that got into trouble because of their investment in the Icelandic banking system. I don't think Leeds was heavily involved in that, but it had fallen into the trap of trusting in that wonderful golden egg laying goose called property. A city has a lot of property, and Leeds more than many, and it has (under/over)exploited its resources for the benefit of private business over that of its citizens. With a bit of luck, the current collapse will teach the city a lesson as it's going to look like an abandoned building site for the next couple of years (although there isn't a gaping hole in the city centre as in Bradford), but, as with the early 90s recession, where a lot of councils got caught out by a different financial trick that went bad (foreign exchange mortgages if anyone remembers that - I only really knew about because I was in the money business at the time), and as councils are eternally underfinanced and always need ways to bring money in, they'll only remember until the next monorail salesman comes along.