Kirkstall District Centre

The original Kirkstall Distict Centre on Kirkstall Lane was fatally undermined by the Morrisons development in 1999. There was no way that a small local supermarket with 160 parking spaces and constricted access could compete with a much newer and larger retail outlet with over 600 parking spaces. The adjacent site was a former tannery that had been converted into a printing works. This area has now been demolished and cleared for redevelopment, but there are issues about the form that such development should take.

Kirkstall District Centre Site

(contours at 5m intervals)

The land is steeply sloping, which creates design problems and opportunities, and increases costs. After the failure of the Kwik Save supermarket, most of the land was acquired by Espalier, who promted a mixed use scheme. In addition to residential and some fairly limited retail development, we hoped to have a local medical facility specialising in outpatient procedures, a library and other Leeds City Council facilities on the site.

Unfortunately, there were problems assembling all these components at the same time, and there are major traffic problems caused by congestion on the A65 and the traffic generated by the Morrisons development. Despite additional traffic signals at both ends of Beecroft Street, it proved very difficult to devise a highway solution that works. The Council, Health Service and the developer worked on an outline planning application 24/572/05/OT for several years but ultimately failed to produce a viable scheme.

Link to the report in the Yorkshire Evening Post 13 April 2007

Download the Report to the Plans Panel for 19 April 2007.

The site has now been acquired by Tesco, who are developing an exclusively retail scheme, but they also face the same challenges of producing a commercially viable scheme on a sloping site, with considerable traffic problems.

Last updated 16 January 2011 at 10:36. Back to the top