Bradford Live

Heads must roll over yet another mismanaged bodge job overseen by this bunch of perennial failures.
Enough is enough!!

 

They won’t.

 

Unfortunately I believe you are correct.

 

They see the high profile politicians of all parties treating the public with contempt and even at local level are more than happy to do the same.

 

The amount of money spent on the Odeon/Bradford Live is more than it cost to build either Bolton Wanderers Stadium, Hull City Stadium or Huddersfield Towns Stadium.

It just gives you an idea of how much money has been staffed up the wall.

 

I drove through town this morning. Bradford (not) Live on one side, and the still-vacant 30000 sq ft brand new office block on the other side. 2 massive failures of our terrible clowncil. How the fck are these imbeciles voted back in every time despite driving a once great city into the ground. It is unbelievably infuriating

 

Have you seen the make up of the Bradford Council, that may go part way to answering your question Steve,

 

Not strictly Bradford Live, but the latest situation with the Aviva Studios in Manchester is interesting and makes Bradford Live look a good deal...

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/241m-aviva-studios-now-needs-30113623

The MEN website is awful, but if you can persevere then some good reading.

I looked into taking the family to see the upcoming David Hockney exhibition. £62.50 for an hour's entertainment at best.

I go to a lot of concerts, I've been to one there since it opened. Nothing of interest. Some people, somewhere, have made a lot of money here.

 

I was at CoopLive on Tuesday night.

It seems a good venue.

I was talking to some of the contractors (officially at the Coop arena as part of the company's ongoing support team) in the bar at the hotel afterwards, a company I know very well, they really believe they have built a top quality venue, and from my experience I wouldn't argue.

 

I see the Labour Councillors rallied round to save the jobs of Ross Shaw and Hinchcliffe last night, quite happy with the direction the City is heading in.

When Ross Shaw and Hinchcliffe are refusing to talk to the local paper, that is a sign that they don't like being questioned about their record.

Hinchcliffe was on Look North saying that Bradford Live would be used in 2025, for what? It's intended purpose or just something to make it look like £50m hasn't been pissed against the wall.

This is a woman who announced her campaign to become West Yorkshire Mayor literally days after Star Hobson had been murdered due to failures of Bradford Council Children's services where no less than 6 instances of neglect had been reported to the council.

It's quite clear that to Labour and the council, Hinchcliffe's Ego is more important than the future of the City.

I see she is playing off the end of life of the Interchange without any acknowledgement that £5m has been spent on knocking the NCP car park down to create a gateway to this station which we now know is at the end of it's life.

 

As an outsider looking in, there seems to be lots of projects ongoing and completed quite recently that in and of themselves are good ideas. However, they don't seem to collectively form a cohesive plan to move Bradford forward. It's very sad to see.

 

The Interchange fiasco is a good example.

Firstly it was shut without any announcement. Then the chair of the transport committee also leader of the council starts shouting and asking why it has been closed, whilst been politely reminded she oversees the committee to which the interchange is run.

We then get a garbled it will be open in 2025 for the CoC but when it was built in the 70s it was built with a 50 year lifespan. So with that in mind why the hell did the council buy a car park to knock it down to create a gateway to an interchange which by their own statement is not at it's end of life.

 

https://becketwelllive.co.uk/

The link above to a very interesting construction project in Derby, a 3,500 capacity purpose built entertainment centre. An impressive structure built to completion, costing over £45.million and already booking in acts and artists for this year. Part of a larger regeneration project, it's being run by the group responsible for the running of venues such as the AO arena in Manchester amongst many others.
Yet we, as Bradford public and taxpayers with a vested interest in the Odeon, still don't even have a definitive date set for opening and not even a date to start the final fit out, never mind actually booking bands and artists to start trying to pay back the enormous tax payers outlay.
I would have thought by now the council would have had this sorted out, if anything to try and recover any shred of respectability over this whole pitiful saga. Even if it meant taking the venue on themselves, it's pretty clear it won't be open this year but at least there would be some sort closure.
What a complete waste of time and money.

 

Hopefully a forward step in the ongoing saga.
https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/24941581.new-operators-50m-venue-bradford-live-announced/?fbclid=IwY2xjawIgJ2tleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHTw_opGHIrskNsBJ-RtFZKOYle31PyI0ueg3kEPAUGkF9wd70y0DDEBmBA_aem_7zxhak2jrwcH_EDQaRvRxA

 

The fact someone is taking it on is a positive, but then again anything to move it forward would have been a positive.

I've had a look at this group and they mainly do Theatres. Infact their listed venues don't have any with a capacity close to the 3k of Bradford Live. So this looks like a risk taken on by both sides. It seems many of the music acts that fill their other venues are more of a tribute act kind of variety. We will see how this progresses.

 

At least someone is signed up. Guessing we will never find out what the council had to give to get them to do the deal or if there were others wanting the deal.

I still have a strange feeling that suddenly either Alhambra or St George’s Hall will next emergency repairs and will close for 6 months from the autumn and everything will move to Bradford Live

 

Reading up on the group, they dont get a great reception online form people who have worked with or for them before. At least it's something? Got to be a step forward from nothing.....

I'm just struggling to see what they put on? Stage shows will go next door, The Alhambra has the best touring musicals pull in Yorkshire. If it's musical acts, i suppose they are in competition with places like the 02 Academy in Leeds? I suppose you don't want it to take acts and money away from St Georges either, both have to have a need and a place in the market.

 

looking at the figures it is actually almost lot bigger that 02 in Leeds, and Manchester Academy, and is more the size of Manchester Apollo and Manchester Victoria.

obviously not the same pull as those venues especially to start with

 

I was talking about Manchester Victoria 02

https://academymusicgroup.com/o2victoriawarehousemanchester/events/month