![\"West](\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/3\/3f\/West_Riding_House_004.jpg\" "\\"West")
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I met yesterday with a tenant of the ‘affordable’ West Riding House, an iconic 1970s office block in Leeds City Centre, which I believe is owned by Moorfield\u00a0<\/a>(a UK ‘real estate’ investor, developer and private equity fund manager, with some \u00a33 billion currently under management) and Holbeck Land<\/a>\u00a0.<\/p>\n It caught my eye because several\u00a0organisations I know have recently moved in, some of whom are extremely cost and value conscious. \u00a0The building has become ‘affordable’ because it is cheaper, I am told, for the owner of the building to encourage occupancy at a low rent in order to avoid paying business rates on an unnoccupied building. \u00a0A nice win\/win. \u00a0The owners save a few bob \u00a0and the organisations get refurbed office space in the heart of the city centre that usually they could never afford.<\/p>\n Except of course there are losers.<\/p>\n Other landlords (generally owners of more modest estates on the edge of the city and in the doughnut of despair) are losing their rents; the communities in which these organisations used to be based are losing much needed trade.<\/p>\n And the Council are losing out on the\u00a0rates, presumably.<\/p>\n When, and if, the economy picks up and office space becomes more\u00a0valuable\u00a0these new tenants will\u00a0probably\u00a0have to move back out or face increased rents. \u00a0I just hope that the buildings that\u00a0they\u00a0have left behind are still in a reasonable condition. \u00a0 And if they have fallen into disrepair as resources are sucked from the suburbs into the centre, never mind, perhaps we can negotiate an asset transfer project to bring them back to the community.<\/p>\n I am sure for many tenants the decision to move into West Riding House is a simple, straightforward and commercial one, driven by their business aims and intended social impacts, and their ability to exploit short term notice periods. \u00a0For others it must have been a much more difficult judgement.<\/p>\n In these hard times we all have to do what we can to get by. \u00a0But we need to understand how the system in Leeds, and every other city, can suck resources into the centre and leave the fringes further marginalised.<\/p>\n Meanwhile Time<\/strong><\/p>\n All over the city there are similar examples of landlords agreeing low rents that allow ‘unusual suspects’ access to resources that they usually could never afford, to do exciting projects that would probably never get off the ground in better economic times.<\/p>\n The key question for me?<\/p>\n Strategically are these projects just about meanwhile time, merely setting up a low cost ‘holding pattern’ until ‘normal’ levels of economic activity resume? \u00a0Or are they ‘hotbeds’ in which we can incubate a generation of new social and cultural entrepreneurs who will help Leeds make a real transformation? \u00a0Time will tell of course, although those that own the assets are pretty clear about the ‘meanwhile’ nature of these arrangements.<\/p>\n