Crown Street Car Park, Leeds
Application to demolish a number of Victorian Buildings along a back lane in Leeds City Centre:
What concerns me about this application is not the loss of the buildings – albeit reprehensible to destroy the Victorian urban grain – rather it is the opportunity cost of developing this site and not creating much needed city centre green space that dismays me.
This could have been a beautiful setting for some breathing space in Leeds, with the backdrop of a railway viaduct, the disordered roofscape of Kirkgate, and the Corn Exchange.
The Victorians would have ensured this space was civic. How they did that seems to be a lost art.