Posts Tagged ‘shopping centre’

What a massive fucking disappointment.

I thought it was going to be really big. But it isn’t. Nor does it have any shops you would ever go in. At least Victoria Quarter has nice things to look at. The shops here are both unjustifiably posh, and yet still boring.

It does have a John Lewis, but what a poorly designed store that is. There are no stairs. How do you build a department store and forget about the stairs? This led to delays in the escalators to the point where they had to have a staff member on one each managing the queue. Meanwhile Elina got stuck in the lift because they were so crammed.

Last Thursday, the Trinity Leeds shopping centre opened. On Friday, it snowed. This presented quite a few problems for the new shopping centre, whose website claims it is the largest in the UK, even though we know that’s not the case (as if it wasn’t obvious to anyone who was walked around Meadowhall, that in itself is only the 8th biggest).

Snow settles on the roof
The large glass roof that covers the centre over will no doubt be magical in ideal conditions, but with a lot of it being fairly flat, the snow just settles on top of it. As a consequence, it almost felt a little gloomy over the weekend because all you could see when you looked up was a thick layer of snow.

It’s very cold
The centre isn’t actually enclosed, it just has a roof over it. The result is that when it is cold, it is cold inside as well because there is nothing to keep the heat in. This would be fine, but at least one of the restaurants has most of their seating outside, which is then rendered useless by our wintery conditions.

It snows inside the centre
Another rather unfortunate consequence of not having a sealed roof is that when it snows outside, it snows inside as well. Walking though the centre on Saturday felt like just being outside as as much snow seemed to be falling inside as it was outside.

When I was young, there was a lovely shopping centre in in the city named The Headrow Centre. It was located on The Headrow, hence the name. Inside there was a statue of a man holding a bunch of balloons and on the top floor was a toy shop packed to the rafters with everything a child could want (in terms of material possessions). Happy memories.

However, in 2008 they decided to kick all the shops out and renovate the centre, re-naming it The Core. Turns out this was a mistake. Indeed, probably one of the biggest mistakes in Leeds’ retail history. The Core is now a barron desert of white walls where shops used to be, and posters desperately trying to attract new businesses.

But of course, who would want one there? It has almost no foot fall; it is simply three floors of emptiness. I doubt they could even give the retail units away.

If that wasn’t the end of their trouble, they’re now surrounded by much more exciting retail prospects on all sides. Most notably, the new Leeds Trinity will form the showcase shopping centre of Leeds when it opens next year.

An entirely renovated Central Arcade sits just of Briggate too.

If that wasn’t enough, the development of the Leeds Arena has led to the Merrion Centre throwing a lot of money into renovating a lot of it’s units too, in the so called “Arena Quarter”.

No wonder the investor is going bankrupt. Sad times.