The demolition of Bradford’s Kirkgate Shopping Centre is expected to last a year – raising concerns that the city could be left with another “hole in the ground.”
But Bradford Council’s regeneration boss has argued that any city undergoing regeneration is going to have its fair share of building sites.
Members of Bradford Council’s Regeneration and Environment Scrutiny Committee were given an update on the City Village development at a meeting last week.
The huge regeneration scheme will see Oastler Market and the Kirkgate shopping centre demolished. Around 1,000 homes would be built on the two city centre sites, with some housing built on Council owned car parks in the Chain Street area.
A planning application for the first stage of the development was recently submitted.
A report that went to the committee gave more details of when the current buildings will be demolished.
Work to flatten the former Oastler Market building is due to begin in the new year and last until April.
But the demolition of the Kirkgate centre is likely to take much longer. The report says it is due to start in April 2026 and end in April 2027.
If the planning application is approved, construction work will begin on the Oastler site and Chain Street in June 2026 and last until June 2028.
Phase 2 will start in February 2027 and last until March 2029.
There are expected to be further phases on the project, and the full City Village development would finally be completed in 2036.
Cllr Alex Mitchell (Lab, Queensbury) asked about the lengthy demolition process.
Simon Woodhurst, lead officer on the project, said Oastler would be much easier to demolish than Kirkgate.
He said: “Oastler is essentially a single storey shed. Kirkgate is a huge building with underground spaces, it is the size of an aircraft hanger. It is also in a really tight city centre location.”
Cllr Mitchell replied: “People are concerned about having another hole or building site in the city centre. How are you going to work it so Bradford doesn’t end up with another huge hole in the city centre?
“We’ve just got the pedestrianisation sorted, we don’t want people coming in and seeing another construction site.
How will you mitigate that impact?”
For many years Bradford was famous for its “hole in the ground” – the planned site of the Broadway shopping centre.
Buildings on the site were demolished, but construction was not completed until almost a decade later.
Mr Woodhurst said there would be a number of “meanwhile uses” for the site – the planning application suggests one section of the site could be used as a temporary nursery to grow trees and plants.
He added: “We’ll have meanwhile uses in each part of the development.”
Cllr Alex Ross Shaw, Executive for regeneration, planning and transport on the Council, said: “If you are a big city with a vision you will have these large-scale regeneration sites – that should be expected.
“It is a sign of moving forward, that’s what it should look like.”
