Has the city that gave us Titus Salt finally turned the corner?

Whisper it quietly. Bradford is bouncing back. It is in the process of ditching its image as a declining and racially-divided northern city and is on the cusp of enjoying a fresh lease of life as one of the fastest growing, and youngest cities in the UK.

“The last 12 months have seen us reach a definitive point in the future of Bradford,” says Maud Marshall, chief executive of Bradford Centre Regeneration, in the annual report of the four year-old urban regeneration corporation charged with revamping the city and its battered image.

“The road map for the city has been completed, giving us a clear direction and way forward. 2006/7 has been the year in which we have seen the regeneration of the city move from the planning phase into implementation”, she says.

Admittedly, this is not the impression gained by regular readers of the letters columns of the Telegraph and Argus, Bradford’s 140-year-old daily paper. One recent contributor likened Bradford to a “war-torn city which is trying hard to achieve the status of a ghost town”.

Meanwhile, Bradford’s public image in the rest of the UK badly needs some refurbishing. Ian Greenwood, leader of the Labour group on Bradford city council, is “sick to death” of the negative coverage that Bradford gets in the national media. Balbir Panesar, the new president of Bradford Chamber of Commerce, says that the regular portrayal of Bradford as a hotbed of terrorism in TV dramas, such as Channel 4’s Britz, is “really out of order”.

By contrast, the growing importance of Bradford’s Asian entrepreneurs, highlighted by the Queen’s recent visit to Bradford’s Mumtaz restaurant, and the government’s recent appointment of Bradford businesswoman Adeeba Malik to head its national task force on ethnic minority businesses, is largely ignored.

“Perceptions were bad in the past but that has changed dramatically”, says Asghar Ali, founder of the Smart Moves estate agency, and one of a growing number of young Asian entrepreneurs who are following in the footsteps of the German and Italian Immigrants who were highly instrumental in Bradford’s success over the last 150 years.

The rise and fall of Bradford, one time capital of the world’s wool textile industry, is a stark reminder of the rapidly changing fortunes of Northern cities. In its heyday Bradford was generally regarded as a more important city than Leeds just nine miles away and proudly boasted of having more Rolls-Royces and Telex machines per capita than the City of London.

But over the last couple of decades Bradford has been slipping further and further behind a rejuvenated Leeds. Unlike Sheffield, Bradford was never invited to join the eight-strong club of Britain’s “core cities”, and its identity is threatened by the growing emphasis on marketing the Leeds city region. At least the local airport is still called Leeds Bradford International, but one wonders how long this will remain now that it has been privatised.

All this is quite a comedown for a city that produced Sir Titus Salt’s Saltaire, one of Britain’s first model villages and now a Unesco world heritage site, as well as author JB Priestley, artist David Hockney and composer Delius.

Part of Bradford’s recent decline was inevitable. It has never been as well connected as Leeds to the national rail and motorway systems, and was far more dependent than the latter on just one industry – wool. It was much worse hit than Leeds by that industry’s decline, and its problems were compounded by the defection to Leeds of several of its best known law firms, such as Hammonds and Walker Morris, which left Bradford short of the quality names whose presence has helped drive Leeds’s regeneration.

But some of Bradford’s recent problems were self-inflicted. The combination of a hung council and a recent rapid turnover of chief executives has meant that the city has often seemed to lack the strong leadership which has helped revive the fortunes of equally run-down northern industrial cities such as Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield and Newcastle.

Bradford’s earlier efforts to regenerate its city centre, which holds the key to its economic renaissance, have been an embarrassing failure.

Architectural historian Gavin Stamp, author of “Britain’s Lost Cities”, says that, “The inadequate and unnecessary post-war rebuilding of Bradford now seems a criminal waste of money, energy and materials. The work of the 1960s was so cheap – it was not appropriate. Look how much now has to be replaced”.

But despite the bad press and decades of neglect, Bradford’s fightback has begun.

Bradford has several strong assets which it is starting to exploit. It still retains a much stronger Victorian heritage than many Northern cities, with 3,500 listed buildings in the city centre alone. Little Germany, once the heart of the UK’s finished woollen goods trade, has led the renaissance of city living with projects such as Asquith Properties’ Gatehaus development and Aldersgate Estates’ careful restoration of Eastbrook Hall being widely admired.

Bradford, in contrast to Leeds, also retains the headquarters of several of Yorkshire’s biggest plcs. Wm Morrison, the supermarket giant that was founded on Bradford market, recently opened a new £50 million headquarters; and in two areas – mail order (Grattan and Redcats) and financial services (Bradford and Bingley, Yorkshire Building Society and Provident Financial) – Bradford has several successful national players which have been expanding their local presence.

“Look at the businesses which are still located in Bradford”, says Roddy Morrison, a director of the Leeds office of property advisers Colliers CRE. “They would have gone a long time ago if the city had real problems”.

The recent £250 million joint venture between ProLogis, a business park developer, and Marks & Spencer to build a giant retail logistics centre on the old West Bowling Golf Club underlines the growing investor interest in Bradford. ProLogis picked Bradford because of its good land supply, one of the fastest-growing labour forces outside London and its prime location on the M62 motorway between Leeds and Manchester.

Saltaire, five miles out of Bradford city centre, is one of Yorkshire’s regeneration successes and Urban Splash’s redevelopment of Listers Mills in Mannigham, which is much closer to the city centre, is already having a similar impact.

But it is Bradford’s city centre which holds the key to the city’s long overdue renaissance. The controversial £2bn masterplan, which envisions flooding a large part of the city centre and was outlined four years ago by architect Will Alsop, remains largely intact.

Alsop’s ideas have been broken down into six catalyst schemes, of which the most important are: the £340 million Broadway shopping centre; the £30 million Park at the Heart; the £350 million Channel urban village; and the Business Forest office park. Together they will once again provide Bradford with a central business district.

But the absence of the giant cranes in Bradford which figure so prominently on the skylines of most northern cities underlines the slow pace of development.

Maud Marshall admits that she is just as frustrated as everyone. “I am at the front of the queue of those who say it should have happened more quickly. But regeneration is a long-term game,” she says.

Progress has not been helped by the National Lottery’s recent failure to back Bradford’s £24.5 million funding bid for its “Park at the Heart” scheme. Nevertheless, Marshall remains upbeat that 2008 will be the year when Bradfordians, and the rest of the UK, will finally notice that Bradford is on the mend. “Bradford is the sleeping giant of the Yorkshire economy,” she continues.

Together with Tony Reeves, Bradford’s new chief executive, and Kris Hopkins, leader of the Conservative-led council, Marshall is the longest serving of a new generation of Bradford leaders who are winning increasing respect amongst the investment community – if not all local residents.

“Bradford is one of the better-run councils in the region and the same goes for its URC,” says Collier CRE’s Morrison, who notes that Bradford is now getting more than its fair share of attention at MIPIM, the international trade show for property investors.

A key test for investor confidence in Bradford is the long-delayed Broadway shopping centre. Work has yet to start on the 670,000 sq ft scheme which was originally
supposed to have been completed by 2007.

Nevertheless, Westfield, the world’s biggest shopping centre developer, stresses that it has no intention of abandoning the project as has been rumoured. “Bradford is a priority for us and we have already invested more than £60 million in the project,” says Neil Maclure, Westfield’s UK development director.

In fact, as EN goes to press it has just been announced that Severfield- Rowen has been appointed to begin structural steel works on the Broadway project, beginning on-site in May 2008.

The other piece of unfinished business is the chronic shortage of Grade A office space. With Bradford office rents at £15 a square foot compared with £25 in Leeds there appears little incentive for new office building. However, Collier CRE’s Morrison believes that once the improved shopping facilities and other infrastructure are in place, Bradford’s office market will take off.

Bradford Council chief executive Tony Reeves is convinced that Bradford’s close proximity to Leeds should be regarded as a benefit rather than a hindrance. He is very keen that the two cities, which are the second and fourth biggest authorities in the UK, abandon their old rivalries and work more closely together. “Over the next 10-15 years Bradford will overtake Sheffield to become the third-biggest,” says Reeves.

Bradford’s economy is set to grow by 36 per cent over the next 10 years, he says, outperforming all others in the region. It is already the third fastest growing city in the UK in terms of population as well as being the city that has the third-youngest population.

“There is plenty of evidence to show that cities with a young, fastgrowing and diverse population are the ones that will do really well in a global economy,” says Reeves.

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