West Village: Exclusive look inside Bruntwood SciTech's new £20m office scheme in Leeds featuring 40,000 plants

It certainly is a commitment for one person – employed by Bruntwood’s supplier I Want Plants – who is tasked with keeping them all alive.

"She basically lives here,” jokes Katrina Jones, associate director, commercial, at Bruntwood SciTech, during a tour of the building.

The plants were a big hit in Manchester at its Bloc development so it was something the team were keen to introduce in Leeds too.

"They are one of the most popular points with our customers in Manchester so there’s been really careful consideration around the greening of this space at West Village,” says Andrew Cooke, regional director - Leeds – for Bruntwood SciTech. “Not only from a sustainability point of view but also as a pleasant space to work, making the space happy and productive for customers.”

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The design of the £20m redevelopment project has sustainability and wellbeing at its heart, and is focused around an expansive new entrance space with shared lounge, breakout spaces, a fitness studio, meeting rooms, a café operated by independent retailer Second City Coffee, art curated through a partnership with Leeds University students, and a central courtyard with expansive biophilia that provides the city centre with much-needed green space.

The showers and changing rooms, which feature individual cubicles, hairdryers, GHDs and even and iron and ironing board, feel more like visiting a spa than an office building.

"That’s the hospitality experience we’re trying to achieve – making you feel like you’re in a quality hotel rather than a workspace – and that goes all the way through,” Mr Cooke says. “The way people greet you coming through the door, how reception is laid out, it’s all part of the atmosphere.”

West Village offers 230,000 sq ft of workspace - a mix of coworking, serviced and leased spaces with varying lease lengths aimed at attracting businesses of all sizes from startups to large, established companies.

The office space commands a rent of £37 per sq ft, making it one of the most expensive commercial buildings in the city.

However, the price doesn’t appear to be putting off the customers who are happy to pay a premium for a base there. Over 75 per cent of the space is currently let to businesses including global insurtech innovators QBE, which has located its robotics centre and technological development hub at West Village, Australian fintech company, PEXA, and coding bootcamp provider Northcoders.

The launch of West Village marks the latest phase of an ambitious development project by Bruntwood SciTech - a joint venture between Bruntwood, Legal & General, and Greater Manchester Pension Fund - that will completely reimagined the former site of Castle House and West One.

Improvements have been made to the building to reduce CO2 emissions, improve air quality, reuse rainwater, reduce noise and create new habitats for local birds and wildlife. “What we’ve done here is a definite blueprint for refurbing and retrofitting existing buildings,” says Mr Cooke.