Perhaps a little light on what the fat cats at Westfield really think of the citizens of Bradford and their elected representatives.

T&A Friday 12th October-
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T&A Thursday 18th October


According to one report,

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...and the T&A aren't even prepared to release the name of the paper they sourced it from. To save everyone's time, just assume I went on a right rant about what a set of incompetent pseudo journalists they are who have failed their customers for generations.

Right from the start, back in 2004/5(?) when it was first mothballed, and we were told "don't worry, it's [idefinitely[/i going ahead", my response was, 'if it's [idefinitely[/i going ahead, why don't you just get on with it, then'? Westfield are liars, cheats and a total waste of space; the spirit of Poulson lives on.

Also, how old is the hole? If I'd been asked to guess, I'd have guessed it would be a teenager before long. I'm sure it's a shedload more than the quoted 4 years, anyway.

I recall the reason been given for not completion was Westfield not having enough money or something sh11te like that. I wonder how they managed to build the massive Westfield centre at the Olympic Park site at the same time. Weird.

The old buildings in and around Forster Square were knocked down in 2004.

I've been out of Bradford for >4 years & I'm fairly sure worked had stopped before that. An interesting legal point (put the tissues away FA) is the planning permission. Normally development must commence within 3 years of the date of granting permission (it used to be 5). The key is what constitutes development & what were the conditions precedent within the permission. I'm not sure if Westfield were involved in the demolition, if so they could maybe claim that was sufficient; if they weren't they did do some ground works which again might qualify. If neither do, although there are now simpler grounds for extending the period of palnning approval, would the Council have the balls for a legal fight with Westfield over their failure to comply? In the current market, & without developers lining up to build, I would say no.

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.

Trouble is the Council gets to allow that many holes in the ground that it's easy to get confused with dates.

Like the Odeon which is I suppose now a virtual hole, though may as well be a real hole. How long has that been left to rot now?

Actually the Odeon site is one of my pet bugbears. One thing Bradford has been crying out for is a medium sized concert venue. St George's Hall is fine for smallish gigs but that's it. Leeds stole a march on us and now pretty much everywhere has decent indoor arenas where decent sized crowds can justify the top shows. Just look at any tour itinerary.

It seemed to me from day one that the Odeon site was tailor made for a concert venue. Not that it needs to be as huge as the MEN, but here's the two sites for comparison purposes



Surrounded by multistoreys and slap bang in the centre, it would be a great spot.

A large ERDF grant (over £1m) was spent on putting in utilities for the subsequent development that's never happened. I've often wondered how that would stand if the development never happened. Can't see much appetite for clawing it back but you never know

Its in the business section of today's The Times

I was told that the originally planned development was meant to be part financed by apartments above many of the retail outlets. It was the collapse in that market as much as the reduced retail demand that led to the failure of the development

Agree, it would make a terrific site for an arena, and to be honest if I were a big moneyed local citizen, after doing up Odsal to the level it deserves, I'd be right on it.

As regards the dates on Waste of a field, I got mine from the photographs I took at the time, so the initial knocking down is very accurate and last work on the site is at least fairly accurate as it is the date of last photo I took and I pretty much stopped when the work did, though as I said it did dribble on for a while (as I could easily see from the canteen window of the post office, where I was working at the time) but my last photo is pretty fair reflection of when they took the mechanical stuff away, though I confess they probably had security and even the odd bloke clearing water out of the site for some time after that.

Would the work towards turning it into a temporary "open grassy urban space" count for planning? That was less than 3 yrs ago wasn't it?

I can fairly confidently say that the urban space was mentioned in neither the approval notice nor the approved plans. So no.
Strictly I would think a separate planning approval for change of use would be required from that given for the retail development, it would be interesting to check whether the Council bothered with that..