Coming to your Town Street: A Prime Tripled Fronted Betting Office to enjoy spending your hard earned lucre in.There was hand wringing, furrowed brows, sadness and despair around the large board table at Leeds Civic Hall yesterday. In fact there were tears in the eyes of the dear councillors and planning officers as they sealed the fate of Armley Town Street and helped hasten it's decline to a ghost town.
The vote of 7 for the application and 4 against (Cllr Harper was against and made a heroic speech against the application) was a reluctant lEGAL one- (if spineless in our humble opinion), as to refuse permission would be 'perverse'!
So despite arguments that this would impact the vitality and viability of our once great town street, (which according to some of the aged representatives, it really had been a shopping destination of some renown) the plain fact of the matter was that the applicant satisfied all 'material planning' concerns in changing the use of Todd's from a retail outlet to a service outlet.
This was despite the 'site visit' of cllrs and planning officers who walked along Town Street, noticing the empty units, and 'fringe' retail such as charity shops, the quantity of which signal a street in decline. (The planning department had searched high and low to find a loop hole in the unitary development plan for Leeds and Armley and national policy but could not find a good legal reason to turn down this application)
In the past few days the Lady Mayoress has learned more about planning than was her want, but the sad facts stand that the plans for Armley cannot influence the
type of 'service outlet' off the main parade. On the bit which is Somerfield etc that is considered the primary frontage and has to be 80% retail and 20% service, Todd's is considered to be in the 'secondary' frontage and therefore more service is permitted along that strip.
It was put to the panel that bookies actually prove that they increase footfall! Hmmm, we would like to know does increased footfall result in increased spending elsewhere? Well ofcourse it must cos every punter who uses a book makers comes out richer than when they went it surely... and step out with a spring in their steps to spend their loot in the restuarants, cafes, clothing shops etc that line Town Street. How curmudgeonly of the Armley Tourist Board to have tried to stop the spread of this prosperity!
So thanks to all of you who took the time to sign petitions etc, there is a hearing at the magistrates court for their licence application, but we feel quite deflated at the prospects of this being rejected, as asked many times before if any of you have any knowledge that could help stop this then please do something if you care.
A big thanks to Maria from He-re who trod the streets with a petition, who really heard what the young and old of Armley thought about this, and yesterday made a very good 3 minute speech asking 'how does granting this application fit with plans for regeneration in Armley?' The answer was a resounding '
bog off to regeneration as we are toothless in the face of an expensive appeal which would cost YOU the council tax payers as we would lose'
Apparently we lucky Armleyites can still look forward to some lovely cash being spent on tarting up Armley Town Street later in the year, not sure how new railings and the like are going to hide the fact of decorating a corpse with jewells though.
The Lady Mayoress knows that you care, but wants to leave this thought with you.
If you care enough about Armley, please don't keep it to yourself. Over on the grown up sister blog www.armleytownstreet.blogspot.com we are going to keep fanning the flames for change. We feel depressed at what has happened and what this might mean for Armley, but perhaps the time is right to capitalise upon the strength of feeling we are witnessing amongst our residents. What were the chain of events in other run down areas that resulted in them picking themseleves up and flourishing. Do we need to form a development trust? WHAT CAN WE DO?
