“Bullshit is the glue that binds us as a nation.”
George Carlin
Despite wailings to the contrary there appears to be an awful lot of money being chucked at Bradford at the moment.
One of the more ambitious plans – ambitious can be defined on several levels – is the proposed City Village. The grand plan is to build 1,000 new homes built over three main areas in the centre – the Oastler Market site, the site of the Kirkgate Shopping Centre and on a number of Council owned car parks off Westgate.
It is a bold move by any measure, choosing to abandon retail for housing and, given the density of these homes, the only way will be up. But how will these be funded? For all the millions being dropped over the city centre, very little is actually inward private investment.
Current projects include (with initial projected costs quoted as an optimistic guide) as follows:
One City Park – a speculative office development @ £35m.
Darley Street Food Market – a three-story market on the old M&S site @ £22m.
Hall Ings Pedestrianisation – £42m to pave over a slug of the city centre.
Interchange Entrance – £22m to flatten this and rebuild even though they want a brand new station across the road.
By and large these projects are all publicly funded which says a lot about the attractiveness of Bradford as an investment opportunity. And if you accuse me of being negative so far as the City Village plans go, consider a current development under construction at the same top end of town.
High Point is a £9.4m project to renovate the old Yorkshire Building Society HQ into eighty-seven flats…sorry…apartments…sorry…luxury apartments! However, Bradford’s local apartment market is characterised by poor values and this is in one of the least attractive areas.
The quango West Yorkshire Combined Authority voted to give the project £2.9m funding. Suspend disbelief but Bradford Council are partnering with Circus Developments (Bradford) Limited.
At a cost of £9.4 million, this equates to approximately £108k per apartment. With values as low as £5k in the city centre, what do they expect to sell them for? To rent out at £500 per month would take 18 years to simply repay capital; so where is the economic value here?
Even if you discount the £2.9m this still places a development value of almost £75k per flat. Those values are unobtainable in Bradford centre especially so detached as this will be from any retail, transport and entertainment provision.
So how will they build 1,000 new homes? Fag packet maths, so favoured by our council, would suggest that, on the basis of High Point, a subsidy of £33k approx per home will be needed i.e. £33m and counting.
Show me the money.
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