insider APRIL 2017 41

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PROPERTY LEADERS’ FORUM – LEEDS AND TALL BUILDINGS

A number of pre-planning ap-plications coming through for tall buildings in Leeds has led

the council to revisit its Tall Buildings Design Guide, published in 2010. That paper suggested a co-ordinat-ed approach around a clustering of skyscrapers, but now the authority’s executives are reviewing the position.

Areas around the town hall, parish church, the university’s Parkinson Tower, and public spaces and river frontages have been protected from being overlooked from tall buildings.

Leeds tops out at 32 storeys, or 112 metres – the height of Bridgewater Place, which has held the city’s high spot since 2007. But developer CEG hopes to build a 40-storey predomi-nantly residential skyscraper rising to up to 137 metres on a six-acre site it acquired off Water Lane in Holbeck. And Heeton Holdings, of Singapore, wants to build five residential towers of up to 41 storeys off Bridge Street.

Tim Hill, Leeds City Council’s chief planning officer, said the authority will probably look at redrawing maps and that broadly two clusters are emerg-ing: one around the railway line and down to Holbeck Village and Hunslet, and another around the north-east of

For the first in this year’s series of Property

Leaders’ Forums, Insider gathered industry

experts at Indigo Planning’s offices to discuss

the increasing number of development pro-

posals that feature particularly tall buildings

the city near the ring road. He added that the council is starting to see pro-posals for redevelopment of existing tower blocks that are ten or 12 storeys but potentially going up to 40.

CHANGING PRIORITIESCEG’s David Hodgson said the tall buildings policy needed to be updated because it was set before an HS2 station was mooted for the South Bank. “Our aspiration for the site was always to increase the density, because we felt that as you arrive into a major European city you need to see activity,” he said. “We are looking at the quality of the design and the quality of the placemaking.

“Burberry coming in heightened that requirement. But a tall building needs to be viable to make it work. To achieve that, create an environment where people want to live and work.”

There have been well-publicised issues with wind at Bridgewater Place. John Brooks said wind was the obvious consideration for future ap-plications, along with how a building interfaces with the ground.

A cluster of tall buildings could emerge around the HS2 station, felt Mike Piet of Leeds Civic Trust Planning Committee. “Clusters of buildings of larger scale sit and look better togeth-er,” he said. “I think the hilltop cluster around the arena has potential to go a long way. It doesn’t obstruct anything and only shadows on to roads – in the same way the CEG one shadows on to the railway station and river. The council says its guide reacted to ap-plications that were there. But perhaps we need to be more positive about where we want them in future policy, and say, ‘These are the best areas to give the city some oomph.’”

THE IMPACT OF HIGH-RISEProf Raymond Quek, the new head of the Leeds School of Architecture at Leeds Beckett University, said it would be good for Leeds to have a skyline from various points of entry. But he warned: “If you get five or six 40-storey residential buildings, theimpact on roads will be significantlyhigh. A lot of tall building develop-ment is piecemeal. It’s good to look atusage – some cities with tall buildingsdon’t really have a life on a weekend.

THE ATTENDEES:John Brooks director, Indigo PlanningDavid Smith associate, Indigo PlanningAmanda Beresford partner, head of planning, ShulmansColin Riches projects director, Mott MacDonaldTony Hall studio director, CJCTDavid Hodgson head of strategic development for north, CEG Tim Hill chief planning officer, Leeds City CouncilGerald Jennings president, Leeds Chamber of CommerceMike Piet chair, Leeds Civic Trust Planning CommitteeRaymond Quek head, Leeds School of Architecture, Leeds Beckett UniversityPeter Connolly chairman, Yorkshire Design GroupPaul Fairhurst head of office, Savills

TIM HILL

JOHN BROOKS

DAVID HODGSON

MIKE PIET

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John Brooks

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insider APRIL 2017 43

PROPERTY LEADERS’ FORUM – LEEDS AND TALL BUILDINGS

They’re all residential or commercial; the mixed-use aspect hardly applies.”

Hill said: “In the system we work in, it is quite piecemeal. You can’t go to a developer and say you have to build your building not just for a client’s needs but to address all possible out-comes. There will be tall buildings that are one-offs. In terms of where you wouldn’t want to see them, it would be interesting to see how the city reacted if we started to get pressure in the his-toric area, say around the town hall.”

On design, Tony Hall said it is important to look for something con-textual that fits into an area. “As you get more tall buildings, the quality will increase,” he said. “I think Leeds was quite brave with Bridgewater Place. It took something to put that building where it was at that time. It did seem to scupper tall development for a time, so it would be nice to see other things follow that up in a positive way.”

MARKET REALITIESCommercial viability is the biggest stumbling block, according to Savills’ Paul Fairhurst. “Say they cost £200 a foot to build,” he said. “On the resi-dential side, our sales figures haven’t hit £300 a foot yet. As build-to-rent comes in, there may be more oppor-tunity. Developers may have to think long-term. In Leeds, a tall building is 12 to 20 storeys. Most of the offices are seven to nine storeys, because of the floor plate size office occupiers want to see. So you have to look at the absorption rates.

“It comes down to developer risk. For a 40-storey tower in a regional city, there is a lot of risk. Do we want lots of planning consents for 40-storey towers, or action and deliverability?”

As an emerging market for tall buildings, we should think of multiple uses, Quek said. He cited Chicago’s DePaul University, in one tall building, and a factory on the 15th floor of a building on Broadway, Manhattan.

Gerald Jennings told the event Leeds needs 15 to 20 hotels, which tall buildings could accommodate. He said: “We can get stuck in an anally retentive discussion of where they should go. The market will tell us where. I get that we need a policy, but it isn’t there because we need to react to something. We shouldn’t say, ‘We

don’t want them in the West End, but we will have them on the South Bank.’ We shouldn’t be prescriptive.”

RIGHT FOR LEEDSHill suggested some places, such as around the arena, would be better for tall buildings and provide a good vista, while others, such as Vastint’s scheme on the former Tetley’s Brewery site on the South Bank, will be more low-rise.

Jennings responded: “I don’t disa-gree. I’m just saying there needs to be a degree of flex and the market needs to be able to say, ‘Actually, I would like something there.’ You talk about coun-cillors framing the policy. The city is bigger than the members. And it is fine the council coming out to consultation, but at what stage will you have a work-shop with people who are not?”

Hill said the authority had done so with the Civic Trust but was happy to do it with the Chamber of Commerce, adding: “But ultimately, if it’s policy, it will be adopted by the council.”

Beresford warned: “To succeed, it needs the city’s buy-in. Now is a great time to be doing it: because of the huge number of pre-apps and devel-opments that we have had going on, you can inform the policy rather than imposing a policy that never works.”

Colin Riches asked Hodgson: “We are talking about how the market will inform this policy. What is the devel-oper driver for tall buildings?” Hodgson said: “It is creating places, density, floorspace, and good use of land, which is a scarce resource.”

Developer Peter Connolly and his business Yorkshire Design Group have done a great deal of regeneration work in Leeds. He said: “I am totally in favour of tall buildings. But some of the most prominent sites are student accommodation and very poor-quality. One thing we would have to look out for is ensuring quality is allowed for.

“I lived in Toronto 40 years ago and went back there last year. It’s dramat-ically changed – the apartments they have are bigger, with a lot of facilities. Apartments built in Leeds were built for buy-to-rent: small and fast turnover. I presume you’ll have to go for a differ-ent market to that. The likes of Legal & General are coming into the market talking about a 40-year payback rather than ‘throw it up and sell it’.”

TONY HALL

GERALD JENNINGS

AMANDA BERESFORD

PETER CONNOLLY

PAUL FAIRHURST

COLIN RICHES

RAYMOND QUEK

DAVID SMITH

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E: info@indigoplanning.comT: 0113 380 0270W: indigoplanning.com

John Brooks

Andrew Astin

Julie White

David Smith

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