The ESCOMPTE project (http://medias.obs-mip.fr/escompte) was conducted in the Berre-Marseilles region of France during June and July 2001. As part of this project, local scale energy, mass and momentum flux observations were conducted above the downtown area of Marseille. A 20+ m pneumatic tower, located on the roof of a building, was operated with eddy covariance flux instrumentation at two levels. The tower was operated in two positions depending on the strength of the wind. The data collected will be used to address a number of issues (see, for example, the papers in this conference of Lemonsu et al. and Salmond et al.). In this paper, details of the measurement program will be presented, Attention will be directed to the measured surface energy balance (SEB) fluxes for a dense downtown area under a variety of wind conditions. The implications of measurement height on local scale flux estimates will be considered.