Recently in Yorkshire Category

So Montpellier Estates leading lady Jan Fletcher has decided to put at least put part of the bad blood between her company and Leed City council behind her and move ahead with plans for its 9.4 acre City One site on Sweet Street.

A planning application has been submitted at the site that was overlooked by the city council for its Leeds Arena plans, a decision that ended up with Montpellier suing the council over its decision.

And my is that planning application grand . Around 2m sq ft of space is planned including 1m sq ft of offices (you can read it in full on the council website here or I've split the main components down in the continue reading link below).

The site is split into five sections including an offices boulevard to the east of the site and the potential for a new road to the west, Bowling Green Terrace Link Road, dependent on the capacity of the existing road network.

According to plans published by the council a few days ago Montpellier plans three buildings in the office boulevard of 9, 11 and 13 storeys. The largest building on the site will be to the north of the site bordering Sweet Street compromising 25 storeys which is labelled up on plans as hotel and leisure.

 

ISIS Waterside Regeneration launched Candle House at Granary Wharf, Leeds last night (a few pictures are above), hoping presumably to reel in a few buyers to what is the final part of the Granary Wharf jigsaw.

The twenty-one storey building was lit up like a birthday cake but is yet to sell any of its 160 apartments which (unsurprisingly) it is marketing at owner occupiers. For just shy of the £100, 000 mark you'd get a studio and access to one of Leeds highest rooftop gardens. For £135, 000 you'd bag a two bedder.

The developers have spent £90m on the Granary Wharf facelift and are aiming the retail at non-high street occupiers. Ossett Brewery announced it would open up at the development earlier this year but although there are a couple of potential lettings in the offing ISIS says nothing has been signed and sealed.

View Experian business failures by region Jan 2010 in a larger map

Business insolvencies across the UK are falling, in fact they are at the lowest rate since June 2007. That's the good news from Experian today.

Unfortunately for Yorkshire, it is top of the list of failures with nearly double the amount of businesses going under last month compared to virtually every other part of the country. It's closely followed by the North East.


LOSERS
Yorkshire had the highest rate of failures in January
Scotland was the only region to see a year on year increase in insolvency

WINNERS
Wales had the lowest rate of business failures in January
The South West was the most robust, with the best financial strength score in January
The North East lost the ignoble top spot as the region with the highest insolvency rate decreasing 30%

Greater London saw the highest year-on-year improvement in financial health yet had the lowest overall financial strength score of any region.

Apple seems to have created the sort of new store excitement most retailers dream of. The iPod to iPhone maker attracted crowds when it opened in St David's 2 shopping centre in Cardiff last year and now the Apple-effect has hit Newcastle.

Ahead of today's opening of the £170m redevelopment and extension of Capital Shopping Centre's Eldon Square, in which Apple has taken a store, lanes were erected in anticipation of queues of shoppers. But even that was not enough with reports of queues forming just to join the queue.

December retail sales almost gave retailers a reason to hope that an end to the recession was in sight but when we looked at the British Retail Consortium research last week it showed the worst Janauary performance for 15 years, there were mutterings of a double dip.

Research into high street footfalls released today by the Association of Town Centre Managers add little evidence to contradict this theory - its figures show that the UK as a whole, experienced a decline in footfall of 7.5% in January compared to 8% decline in the same period last year.

However, when the figures are broken down per region it shows that the recession may not be the primary cause of fewer shoppers after all. It could be the snow.

When Drivers Jonas opened its Leeds office in 2007 it really surprised the Yorkshire market. The Leeds agency market had become bloated and 25% of DJ's order book already came from Yorkshire even without an office in the region.

John Weir, who had been at DJ's Manchester planning and development division, was hugely aware of this when he set up the Leeds office. He said at the time that DJ's consciously shied away from investment and agency because"there are already a lot of mouths to feed in a market the size of Leeds."

As a result the immediate impact on Leed's property scene will be low. As one local property player said: "From a Leeds perspective the Drivers Jonas offices has focused on market consultancy, on the planning and regeneration side rather than agency and in that sense I don't anticipate it will change as much as say, in their City office."

However, over the longer term Deloitte already has an office in the Yorkshire capital (see our interactive map for a complete list)...

For Manchester reaction click here.

For Birmingham reaction click here.

For Cambridge reaction recorded at our Focus reception on Friday click here.

ESTATES GAZETTE YORKSHIRE FOCUS

 FEBRUARY 27, 2010 ISSUE

Retail

A look at the regions key schemes and projects

Liz Morrell, freelance writer, 01454 415 509, lizmorrell@drdatamail.co.uk

 

Offices

Analysis of the current market conditions

James Graham, freelance writer, 0161 9218177, jamesgraham909@hotmail.com

 

Occupiers

A guide to occupiers and what they want

James Graham, freelance writer, 0161 9218177, jamesgraham909@hotmail.com

 

Deadline for receipt of editorial information is 1st February

Click on View image to see larger maps.

So Britain's biggest retailer Tesco, announced its strongest sales for three years today. For it, the big freeze and ensuing panic buying to stock up on storecupboard items can't have hurt. Nor can reports on the BBC's Today programme  that because of the freezing conditions we can't get to the high street sales and, faced with being forced to stay indoors, we're splurging on contraception instead.

But for the rest of the high street it's been less cheery (think of Debenhams warning today and Marks and Spencer's performance last week).

Synovate's retail traffic weathermap (see above) shows there's been lower footfall than forecast for December as wintry weather made shopping trips more difficult meaning there were fewer early bargain hunters.

There's a definite north/south divide with footfall dropping 3% in the midlands and northern england (which covers, the north east, north west Yorkshire and the Humber). In contrast  it rose in London and the south east (4%) and Wales and the south west(nearly 3%).

I've just been rumaging through the Smith Institute's The Future of the Yorkshire and Humber report  (I wrote about it back at its launch in November last year) when this diagram from Chapter Four caught my eye.

When you look at the picture below bear in mind this chapter is penned by Yorkshire Forward and the local Government office and is designed to aid people's understanding of the region as well as promote and endorse it to would be inward investors. 

If anyone can tell me just what the relationship between functional subregions and thematic boards is, based purely on the diagram above, I'm willing to buy them the slap up Italian dinner that the above "plate of spaghetti" diagram seems to be depicting. 

It's been a long, long time since I got wind of someone proposing any major development never mind a tower, so this one's worth noting.

Plans have been launched in Leeds for a 35 storey tower at the top of Vicar Lane. Yorkshire-based Manor Property Group bought the site a few days ago and wants to put 600 Carey Jones designed student apartments on it and call it Manor Point.

The cost is £30m although there's little talk about funding or timescales.

In its favour the student accomodation market has been slightly more stable and the council will undoubtedly be keen to see development flourish. From a planning point of view the site is in within what the developer calls "a string of tall building developments around the A58M."