The Guardian: "While new retail space is being created at the lowest rate since the 1960s, Leeds is bucking the trend"

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"Building shopping centres is fraught with difficulties. Just ask the people of Bradford. 

"Their city centre is blighted by a large building site, dubbed the Bradford Hole [right], where work on a new Westfield shopping centre was halted four years ago. Occupy Westfield protesters recently set up camp there for five weeks but have left again.

"In nearby Leeds, however, it's a different story. A new shopping centre the size of 13 football pitches and crowned by a sweeping glass dome is due to open there next year, the largest project of its kind in western Europe. Land Securities' Trinity Leeds will have a million square feet of space with 120 shops, 12 restaurants, bars and cafes and the biggest Everyman cinema in Britain. As if that were not enough, work is due to start on another huge city-centre mall in 2014.

"... Despite the problems in Bradford, Hammerson – one of Land Securities' biggest rivals – also believes it has the financial strength to make a new scheme work in Leeds. The company, which owns shopping centres around the country including Brent Cross in London and the Bullring [sic] in Birmingham, hopes to start construction of a £120m, 400,000 sq ft mall called Eastgate Quarters in 2014. It originally envisaged a £650m mall of the same size as Trinity Leeds, and the size of a second project phase will depend on market conditions."