News that financial backing for the Vicar Lane leisure complex has been withdrawn is a depressing Christmas present for Bradford. It is very disappointing that after all the delays and the scaling down of the original scheme, the potential investors have decided that they do not want to put money into property development

The scheme is a worthwhile one - just the sort of thing, in fact, that Bradford needs. Apart from the forecast of 450 full-time and part-time jobs it would have created, it would have brought many families and individuals into town for leisure and recreation purposes instead of having them trail off to places like the Showcase multiplex at Birstall. That would certainly have given an important knock-on boost to the city centre.

The news must be a big blow to the traders who were ousted from the now-demolished Rawson Market pending its redevelopment with money due to come in from the sale of the Vicar Lane site. Their future is now in even greater doubt - as is the future of the top end of Bradford around the hole in the ground where the market once stood. Until something positive happens to that site, it is hard to see how the area around it can be regenerated.

We must hope, now, that new backers can soon be found who will realise what great potential there is in Bradford and come up with a similar scheme for the prime Vicar Lane site. If that scheme, and the Odsal one, can start moving during next year, it will give Bradford a huge morale-boosting kick-start into the new millennium.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.