Plans to demolish three shops to make way for a student residential tower in Burley, just outside central Leeds:

Not much of old Leeds remains in this part of the city. Once a patchwork of dense back to backs, with a tramway circumnavigating the area, this part of Burley is slowly transforming from a nowhere belt on the periphery of the city centre into a student village.

The buildings are to be demolished to make way for the tower below. Quite a level of densification, which will further the repopulation of the area. Reluctantly the loss of Victorian Leeds is outweighed by the regenerative benefits in this instance.

The buildings are simple, and atypical of the era with painting facia boards and large eaves overhangs. One aspect of the site that would be a lamentable loss is the erasure of Back Burley Street, which is still paved with the original stone sets. Maybe the developer would have integrated the street into the ground floor. A bit of innovation like that would serve to give the building a real identity, and an appealing commercial pull on the ground floor.