Whilst I'm less than a huge fan of the council's attempts at regeneration (Including the recent demolition of two old buildings by Cov Uni) the problem is really that there's little commercial interest in investing in the city centre due the lack of people using it... Hence why all the grand plans end up vanishing to be replaced by another watered down one...
The road that was dug up: the problem was a huge tunnel underneath it (Partly the basement of the original Owen Owen building that was bombed) was found to be structurally weak and this required much of the money for the project to be funneled into making it safe...
If Cov city centre was filled with leisure venue, residents, wasn't surrounded by four (Sometimes 8) lanes of dual carriageways and didn't consist of nothing but dead ends and dead space, businesses might be more interested in investing... but it's too late now to sort that mess out, so hello cheap buildings on cheap, economically unviable land - much of them by Cov Uni!
Won't even start on the horrendous mess they've made of IKEA and that general area.