New park pops up in Leeds City Centre

An innovative new pop-up park has opened in the heart of Leeds city centre.

The new temporary green space off Cookridge Street includes artificial grass, planters, benches and deckchairs and will be in place for four weeks.

Launching today (Wednesday, Aug 10) the pop-up park will see the nearby street closed to traffic and is aimed at creating a new relaxing summer space for people to enjoy at lunchtimes and in the evenings when the sun is out.

The park follows on from the recent installation of a new temporary playscape, complete with climbable sculptures, benches and planting in St John’s Churchyard.

The playscape, which has been created as part of the city's Child Friendly Leeds ambition, will be in place throughout the school summer holidays and is aimed at giving young children a space to play in the city centre.

The two projects also follow the ongoing pilot of the pedestrianisation of Greek Street on a part-time basis over the summer, also aimed at creating more vibrant, traffic-free spaces in the city centre.

Councillor Judith Blake, leader of Leeds City Council said:

“We’ve already seen that the temporary closure of Greek Street has created a vibrant and popular new place for visitors to the city centre to enjoy and we’re keen to keep that momentum going.

“The pop-up park on Cookridge Street and the new playscape at St John’s bring some extra temporary greenspace to Leeds city centre and we hope that as well as being relaxing places for shoppers and office workers, they will also be a place that children and families can enjoy.

“Innovative, short term projects like this can have a real impact for those who visit, work and live in the city centre and can create places where people can come together and appreciate what Leeds has to offer.”

The new pop-up park will see Cookridge Street closed to traffic from Monday, August 8 until Sunday, September 4.

ENDS

For media enquiries, please contact:

Stuart Robinson

Communications Officer

Leeds City Council

Tel: 0113 224 3937

Email: stuart.robinson@leeds.gov.uk

www.leeds.gov.uk