This evening the great and the good will be meeting at the National Media Museum for a brain-storming session about regenerating the city centre through opportunities offered by the Council’s £35m Growth Zone.

Bradford Council leader, Councillor David Green said earlier this week that an extra 2,800 jobs will be created by this and by Westfield’s Broadway shopping centre. The hook is £3m worth of rate rebates to new businesses moving into the city centre.

The way forward, it seems, depends on retail or shopping. Perhaps leisure too, if proposals for the redevelopment of the Odeon materialise and the National Media Museum’s revitalisation plans come to fruition.

But are the movers and shakers, the forward thinkers, missing a trick?

Up until the 1960s when zonal planning became fashionable, manufacturing and warehousing was a feature of Bradford city centre along with shops, offices and places of entertainment.

In the ensuing 50 years, things have changed – now Bradford has a surplus of unlet space, especially above groundfloor level. An example of this is the former HQ of the Bradford Dyers’ Association on Well Street. Many former industrial sites, such as the Conditioning House on Canal Road, also remain empty.

Hasn’t the time come for manufacturing in and around the city centre, particularly in textiles, to make a comeback?

A week ago, 65 people representing the Bradford Textile Society, the Society of Dyers and Colourists, Bradford College, the University and Bradford Council, attended a forum about the future of the industry.

They were given a paper which stated: “Bradford has had a strong recent growth in textiles manufacturing: 46 per cent increase in jobs from 2008-2011 (2,500 employed in Bradford in textiles manufacturing in 250 companies in 2011), some of this as a result of repatriation of aspects of manufacturing processes.”

One of the points they considered was what a future wool textiles economy in Bradford might look like and how best this could be supported.

Peter Hopkinson, professor of innovation and environmental strategy at Bradford University’s School of Management, said: “We don’t produce the final products – this is the problem in Bradford. We make the cloth and pass it on down the supply chain for others to add on the value in Italy, say, as an Armani suit.

“Clothes are aspirational especially for the young – but going round a dye house in Bradford is not as glamorous as going to a fashion house in London.”

In the past Bradford has specialised in producing and finishing cloth. The future could involve more firms employing people to make up clothes for export to Japan and China.

In August Peter Ackroyd, president of the Wool Textile Organisation and chief operations officers for the Campaign for Wool, told the Telegraph & Argus that there was a serious conversation to be had about encouraging the regeneration of quality menswear manufacturing close to the supply of wool and worsted in Yorkshire.

“The gap is in making suits and jackets. The problem is that nobody in Leeds or Bradford has been doing that for the last 15 years.”

The sewing skills of Asian women, in particular, could be employed to supply this gap in what used to be called cut, make and trim – sewing together pieces of garments.

A Bradford-based former managing director of textile dyeing companies in Yorkshire and Lancashire, who wished to remain anonymous, agrees with Peter Ackroyd. He believes there is an opportunity for textiles in quick-response garment manufacturing.

He said: “Bradford used to have a lot of garment manufacturing companies within half-a-mile of City Hall, and to bring back such a labour-intensive industry would do wonders for the retail footfall.

“There must still be the legacy of some residual skills and an untapped source of Asian female labour.

The retail fashion mark-up is anything between 50 and 100 per cent, so rather than wait for repeat garment supplies from the Indian subcontinent it would seem logical to get them made up here.

“Quick delivery would mean more repeat orders and justify a premium price to cover more acceptable working conditions. The cachet of ‘Made In Bradford’ could again have a positive meaning.”

Professor Hopkinson said the idea of making up clothes in Bradford was perfectly feasible.

“The economy is picking up, we are on a rising tide, but we have to catch it or else we will remain on the sandbank,” he added.