Numerous people have complained about strong winds battering people near the present highest structure, the 32-storey Bridgewater Place at the corner of Water Lane, Leeds.

But Dr Lindsay Smales, of the School of the Built Environment at Leeds Met, believes problems on Wellington Street caused by Lumiere – which will become Leeds's tallest building – could be far worse.

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Sensationalist nonsense. All buildings create a downdraft regardless of their size. The completion of Bridgewater Place coincided with some of the strongest winds in recent years. Of course it is likely that people are to be blown about by the wind.

As for people complaining about building new projects in Leeds, I think it would be incredibly naive To suggest an halting of this process. Leeds is a city on the up, both socially and physically. The great fact about this is that most of the new projects are entirely privately funded. With investment from the private sector through the roof the city will obviously expand. Only through this expansion will it be noticed outside of Yorkshire and only by being noticed will we get public money invested in infrastructure, transport, education and public facilities. Yesterday, Gordon Brown stated that the £399 per capita disparity in transport funding between Leeds and the South West was justifiable as improvements are not needed in Leeds' transport infrastructure. How else is our city to attain funding for major projects without showing what we are giving to the country. Our SuperTram system was shelved due to public apathy. Only later did the Leeds citizens think that it may have been detrimental to our city.

My opinion on the swiftest remedy would be for a publication such as the YEP to follow the example of the Manchester Evening News, where showcasing pride in the city and actively pursuing issues such as transport take the place of taking each opportunity to degrade Leeds and West Yorkshire whilst pandering to the latest complaints of the complaining classes.

Nick Varley, Leeds/London

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He is worried the large, flat surfaces of Lumiere's twin towers, stretching 54 and 31 storeys high, coupled with its one-acre site, will create a blustery nightmare for anyone using the street.

He said: "The scale of the building and the small, tight, constrained site would suggest there would be microclimate problems in relation to wind hitting such a high, large, slab block and going straight down to the ground.

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"Wellington Street could be in danger of being almost unpassable for pedestrians."

He said the best shape to cope with wind issues was rugby-ball or lozenge shaped. As for Lumiere's "very, very big rectangular blank walls": "I can't believe that's not going to cause problems."

He added: "The local authority could, and should, insist on planning permission that a lot more attention is paid to the microclimate effect of these buildings."

Richard Dean, joint managing director at KW Linfoot, the developer behind the Lumiere project – which will be one of the tallest residential buildings in Europe – said extensive wind tunnel tests had been carried out before work started on site.

He said: "All the results lead us to believe that where there were going to be some wind problems I think we have mitigated them. We significantly changed the building where we found problems."

He said the tests had shown the planned winter garden between the towers would have caused serious turbulence at ground level but architects had adapted the design to stop this

Carillion recently won a £155m contract to build Lumiere, which is expected to take around four years to complete.

Chris Gilman of Landmark Development Projects, joint developers of Bridgewater Place with St James Securities, said they were taking complaints about strong winds around their building "very seriously".

There are already plans to build additional lobbies so the wind can no longer force lift doors open. A canopy could be added to dissipate the wind as it hits the structure.

A Leeds City Council spokesman said: "The science of modelling wind effects is not yet as accurate as we might wish. Any lessons learned from Bridgewater Place will be included in the Tall Buildings Strategy when it is published."

YOUR VIEWS:

WEDNESDAY 12th MARCH I WAS NEARLY BLOWN ONTO THE BUSY ROAD WHILE CROSSING THE TOP OF WATER LANE

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have lived in Leeds all my life and feel that it is my city. I remember being able to get the bus down Burley Road and when you got to Park Lane College you got a fantastic view all the way up the Headrow with the Town Hall and the old Leeds Permanent Building Society clearly visible. Likewise, after the demolition of Quarry Hill Flats, if you travelled down York Road you got a view all the way up Eastgate and the other side of the Headrow. There was nothing in between to spoil the view.

Then the Council gave permission for Westgate Point and from the 80s onwards, Leeds has been on a slippery slope. Now there is no view into the city from Burley Road and Quarry Hill is swamped with buildings that mar the view.

What grieves me is that Westgate Point, like the Magistrates Court building and so many others is so dated. It has no architectural significance for me at all. This practice of allowing disparate buildings to be put up in the city centre with no regard to the existing historic buildings and layout has to be stopped. A drive down Scott Hall Road used to afford a wonderful view of the Leeds University Parkinson building. Now that view is partially obscured by some hideous red flats which were dated even before they were completed. I can't wait for the building behind the civic hall to be completed and another view to be sullied. Welcome to the concrete jungle!

D Darby
Moortown

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Oh come on, this is all just senstionalist nonsense, the streets of Leeds aren't substantially windier than any other similar town. Many other cities have much taller buildings than Leeds and they don't have problems. If Wellington Street was that bad, 5th Avenue in New York would be totally impassible, but in reality, I've found the streets of downtown New York and Chicago no windier than their surrounding areas.
Robert Stubbs

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Many years ago whilst working in the Buildings and accommodation department of Royal Mail House in Wellington Street I received a phone call from the Doorkeeper informing me that the Flagstaff over the main entrance was oscilliating in the wind and causing much alarm to passersby.This was a regular occurrence whenever the weather became windy and eventually resulted in the flagstaff having to be moved to another site.
When I say oscilliating,I mean that the Flagstaffwhich was situated at a 45degree angle over the Main entrance doors was actually bending in the wind and appeared to be rotating in a circle.
I am sure that many people,not least people working in the YEP building will have many stories to tell about "Windy" Wellington St. and I can well believe the fears of the experts
Harry Collett

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Walking up and down Wellington Street is an adventure in itself now part of the footpath is closed. If Leeds ever wanted to put a wind generator up, above the road would be an ideal place. It's bad enough now, so it's going to get worse?

Trouble is there isn't really another route to get from City Square to the YP building.
Andrew Ripley

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I work on Whitehall Road. I weigh 8 stone dripping wet and it has now actually become dangerous for me to walk along the pavement for fear of being blown in to the (very busy) road. I am not exaggerating and this has nearly happened several times. I have said for a long time that the tall buildings are creating wind tunnels and I am not a structural engineer or "tall buildings expert", this is simply a common sense view.


Incidentally, how many more city centre apartments do we need in the Wellington Street area considering that a high percentage are already unoccupied? Leeds is not Milan or Barcelona and we are kidding ourselves that we have what it takes for city centre living!

As for the plan to redevelop Holbeck & Beeston and call it "not Leeds eleven, but Leeds double one" DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED!!!
Alyx Dawid

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I was travelling in my car past the Bridgewater Place building away from the Leeds Hospital Fund building and the wind hit my car, nearly lifting the car sideways-I was stunned, and so was my husband who was with me at the time.
We assumed it was a freak wind that had hit us, but now we are not so sure.
Marie Hutchinson-Dean

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It's not like tall buildings are something new, there's been buildings as tall as Lumiere for nearly 100 years now, and far taller flat faced buildings have proliferated almost every major city in the world. It's nothing new, there must be masses of evidence and information out there from practical experience. If the School of the Built Environment at Leeds Met are just quoting experiences with Bridgewater Place, I suspect they aren't the subject experts they make themselves out to be.
Robert Stubbs

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The word Skyscraper is a bit of an exaggeration for this building. If you want to see what a skyscraper is, go to New York, where they build them bigger, better, and faster, and were doing this nearly a hundred years ago!

I'd put decent money on the Lumiere buildings not even reaching completion. The question we need to be asking, is does Leeds need ANOTHER new building project????? Maybe focus your editorial/journalistic skills on some of the existing buildings in Leeds i.e. the amount of city centre empty properties with To Let signs in the windows, Leeds has had the boom, are we now heading for a slump? The first worrying sign: A pound shop on Albion Street (a major shopping street), What a cosmopolitan city ha ha! The London of the North, don't make me laugh!
Dan Maguire

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