Bradford Council announces £15million plans to demolish Kirkgate Shopping Centre

Bradford Council has announced plans to demolish Kirkgate Shopping Centre as part of a major transformation of the city centre.

The council has bought the 50-year-old shopping centre for £15.5million and will demolish it to create a "city village".

Once the Kirkgate Centre is gone, it will be replaced by a green space, housing and small commercial spaces.

The scheme will tie in with plans to build housing on the Oastler Market site opposite Kirkgate.

As part of the plans, Primark will move from Kirkgate into the former Debenhams unit in the Broadway Shopping Centre.

Other retailers have also been offered support to move into the city centre's many other vacant units.

The Kirkgate Centre opened in 1976 under the name the Arndale Centre, controversially replacing the city's much-loved Victorian Kirkgate Market.

It is currently home to 46 shops and food and drink businesses including Sports Direct, New Look and Primark.

The council claims the changes will "create a forward-looking sustainable city centre where business, retail, residential and leisure sectors work in unison to deliver transformational regeneration."

Councillor Alex Ross Shaw, the Council's executive member for planning, regeneration and transport, said with retail increasingly becoming focused around the Broadway, and more high street chains disappearing from UK towns and cities, a shift in this area of the city was needed.

He said the aim is to avoid the low cost, low quality housing that has blighted the city centre for years.

Mr Shaw added: "With Kirkgate demolished the city village can expand. It will become a mix of green space and different housing types.

"It needs to be something different; we don't want just one bed flats or bedsits. We want more families and more young professionals.

"We need more housing to be built on brownfield sites, and that is what this is doing. We have to make sure it is visually fantastic, not just huge apartment blocks.

"It will be a high quality development that will introduce something new to the city."

The planned City Village will have up to 1,000 homes, and will include the under construction High Point redevelopment.

The centre is not expected to close any time soon, with Primark unlikely to be moving before 2024.

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