Westfield were not involved in the demolition, which started around March/April 2004 when they knocked down the Forster Square post office building directly facing the sorting office. My recollections of the time are that a special company called 'Connecting the City', or somesuch was set up to front the operation. I believe they were also the people who did the roadworks, connecting Cheapside with Canal Rd and which runs in front of the Midland Hotel and the Post Office.

Westfield were not even the initial developer, but inherited the job when they took over the original company, whose name escapes me, though IIRC this was some time around 2006. Some ground works have been done by Westfield, hidden behind the big fence around the current 'city park', which is of course just the outer area of the Westfield site. Going on dates from my photographs work was still continuing in July 2008, though I can't say that anything too meaningful was going on as it dribbled on for ages before they decamped.

Yeah, like the idea of extending the tram into Bradford - which would clearly be very beneficial to the city by bring thousands of Leeds folk into Bradford to do their shopping....

To be honest I've said all along that any money arriving under a 'Leeds' tag will stay in Leeds - why would they let others have any of it?. Imo, the Bradford Councillors involved in the 'City Region' racket must have secured super duper jobs nodding through money for Leeds, either that or maybe they all live in Leeds. When you look round, there are lots of tiny little places all over the country which have their own 'City Region' and it's a travesty that Bradford is stuck into a foreign one. The fourth largest actual city region in England just being an appendage to another area is just a joke, it's just like the Eighties and Thatcher all over again.

Quote: Bulliac "Not sure how the council could have specified how long the garden would be there though, given it was wholly dependent on when Westfield finally get their aaaahs into gear, at which point - if it ever arrives, of course - it would disappear under the shops.'" Because that is the nature of a temporary approval, it is for a fixed period as stated in the approval conditions. Democracy can be a wonderful thing, searching the very efficient Council planning portal tells me the permission was for 2 years from approval in June 2010. Obviously this has expired, whether the Council have applied to have this extended I cannot say as I gave up the will to live by this stage. www.planning4bradford.com/online ... B4PDHC1000

Quote: Bulliac "Not sure how the council could have specified how long the garden would be there though, given it was wholly dependent on when Westfield finally get their aaaahs into gear, at which point - if it ever arrives, of course - it would disappear under the shops.'" Because that is the nature of a temporary approval, it is for a fixed period as stated in the approval conditions. Democracy can be a wonderful thing, searching the very efficient Council planning portal tells me the permission was for 2 years from approval in June 2010. Obviously this has expired, whether the Council have applied to have this extended I cannot say as I gave up the will to live by this stage. www.planning4bradford.com/online ... B4PDHC1000

It is now much easier to renew expired planning permissions, the Council may well have done this. To be honest I'm not really bothered about the technicalities of this, more that the Council let Westfield treat the city with contempt.
As an aside, the Government like to blame the planning system for delaying development & holding up 'recovery', but the fact is there are 400,000 undeveloped houses with planning permission in this country. It is demand & the availability of funding that is the problem.

Oh, I agree, though I'd suggest that lack of demand is really another symptom of lack of funding; if there were sufficient jobs, of which people felt confident of assuming were long term [iand[/i which paid a reasonable day's wage for a reasonable day's work there would be little problem with demand....imo of course, Gids and Cams and the rest of the Bullingdon mob might have other ideas..