Opportunities to build on success of city centre
DEVELOPMENT opportunities in Bradford were presented to international investors at the global property exhibition MIPIM earlier this year as part of the city region’s push to attract significant inward investment.
The Bradford City Centre Growth Zone has already benefitted from £15m of capital investment and £30m spending on public realm since the zone was created around three years ago.
Further investment was being sought to kick-start a number of schemes and Bradford Council was open about its willingness to be accommodating to developers and investors who wanted to come to the city.
Potential investors were told: “Bradford is a city brimming with confidence and offers a range of great opportunities for employment as well as business across a diverse range of sectors.
“Despite the recent growth and investment in the city, the council has aspirations to grow even further and has set out ambitious development plans to make the city one of the best places to operate a business in the UK.
“The approach taken by the council will ensure that the city is a great place in which to invest.
The opportunities include The Tyrls, a site with outline planning permission for 95,000 sq ft of grade A office space and 100,000 sq ft of commercial space at Exchange Court, which could include retail and leisure alongside offices, and a 2.5 acre gateway site that was the former Yorkshire Water depot.
“Bradford has got a lot going for it,” said Edward Marshall, managing director of Frank Marshall Estates.
“We are right on the motorway, right in the middle of England, with cheap labour and cheap buildings.
“It’s a good place – although it’s not a good place to build Grade A offices, it’s a good place if you want to make things.”
The challenge around Grade A office space was one of the reasons why Yorkshire Building Society relocated 800 people to Leeds in early 2014, a move which its chief treasury and corporate affairs officer Andy Caton acknowledged “possibly didn’t make me popular with Bradford Council at the time”.
Since then the organisation has got the number of staff employed at its Bradford headquarters back up to the levels they were at before the move, although he wondered how connected some of his staff are with the city centre.
Caton said: “I just wonder that where we are located on the M606 is there enough leverage of that. A lot of them don’t go into Bradford – what an amazing opportunity the Westfield development is for them to get reacquainted.”
Law firms are also increasingly looking to have large centres which fulfil back office functions, following big moves by Allen & Overy to Belfast and Freshfield to Manchester. While no firms have yet chosen West Yorkshire, Gordons’ managing partner Paul Ayre believes Bradford should be trying to attract the large law firms.
He said: “There is a situation at the moment where some huge Magic Circle firms, the highest tier of law firms who are based in the City of London, are starting to relocate back office staff. For example, Freshfields have done a deal to relocate a load of people to 100,000 sq ft in Manchester.
“Leeds could have had that, but Bradford could have had that. There is loads of empty office stock in Bradford and it’s a cost-saving exercise ultimately.”
