The Core

The Core is a small shopping center in the city center of Leeds, it appears to be quite run down, with not a lot of shops located here, which made me slightly disappointing on my previous visits here, with most stores being outside, but they is an inside area too and a very expensive NCP car park, which I wouldn’t recommenced parking at.
Some of the stores here include a Little Waitrose, which is a small store but always worth a look in especially considering loyalty card holders can get a free coffee every day or tea, and a newspaper when you spend £5 on weekdays, or £10 on weekends.
HMV, Game and JD Sports also have stores here, and they is a few eateries including Subway and a few smaller /​independant chains which we certainly don’t have where I’m from in Manchester!
This certainly isn’t a place you can spend a few hours, infact you can barely spend an hour here, unless you’re looking for a store in particular, it isn’t worth calling in here, unless you are walking around Leeds city center, as it is quite poor, small and appears run down, like most of the smaller shopping malls in Leeds, including St John’s, Still with a few big name stores like Waitrose and HMV, I still feel it deserves 2 stars.

I have to agree with everyone else. After months of work on this building, it finally looks done and presentable. It does fit in and looks great so I went in for a peak and was surprised to find absolutely NO shops. Where are they all? I went into the Clinton cards outlet, which was a dive in itself, I really wasn’t impressed. For an up and coming place this center does not show much hope. Admittedly, Bank from the outside looks rather impressive and is huge, staff are perfectly friendly and so on. It’s just a shame this doesn’t run throughout the shopping centre.
I do not recommend coming here it’s surrounded by much better things and truly at the moment looks like a waste of time and money. I’ll have to come back to you in a few months and write another review. Fingers crossed someone takes a plan of action to get this place sorted!

So I imagine when the authorities of Leeds planned this recent shopping centre addition to Leeds city centre they pulled in a bunch of people that had never visited the city. Ever. Before or since. They must have sat down and thought, well, every city needs a shopping centre so why don’t we develop one in Leeds too? Why not? I’ll tell you why not — because if there are many more shopping centres created in Leeds city centre the only bit of outdoor space will be the spaces in between all of the shopping centres. This one is actually more pointless than many of the others as the majority of the shops can also be accessed from the outside. ‘In’ it there is an HMV, Bank, USC, Sunglasses Hut, Game, a couple of sports shops and New Look.

The Core is a relatively new development in the city centre, having had a huge image overhaul recently. As Li said it does look a lot tidier and cleaner… but where are the shops? It consists of oddly-​named ‘Sunglass Hut’, Game, HMV, Sports Direct, New Look, Cotswold and Bank. The thing is, I’d say almost all of these have a main entrance outside the shopping centre, so it kind of negates the need for the centre all together, although it adds a bit of convenience if you happened to want to visit a few of these on the same day.
I may be being unfair to the Core because all the evidence suggests it is still mid-​refurb — there seems to be much more in the way of stark blank white walls than shops and the top floor appears to be out of bounds. Hopefully all this will improve in the near future.

The Core is one of the new developments of shopping centres in the centre of Leeds. It feels like an eternity since they started developing this space, but now it’s finally done and open to the public again, the developments and changes are noticable, it’s much tidier than it was, and more on the welcoming side, it’s not really spectacular in the way of shopping. Stores taking residence within The Core are New Look, HMV, JD Sports, USC, Sunglasses Hut, more toilets, an information desk, handy, and the construction of an indoor food court to name but a few. Aesthetics wise it’s definitely easier on the eyes than The Merrion Centre, and when it rains it’s always nice to be undercover.