COUNCILLORS will get their first glimpse tomorrow of detailed plans for an £11 million community centre and school.
The Castle Hill Community Learning Resource Centre in Tonge Moor includes Bolton's first privately-financed school, a library, youth club and football pitch.
If planning permission is granted, it will be a landmark for a scheme which has been in the pipeline for years and is hailed as a crucial catalyst for the regeneration of Tonge Moor.
The existing Castle Hill School and Castle Hill Centre, off Tonge Moor Road, will be demolished and replaced with an educational centre aimed at the whole community.
Elements of the project include:
A new primary school;
Community library with Internet access;
Youth club;
Nursery;
Play areas and football pitch;
268-space car park.
The council stresses there will be an "open all hours" policy designed to ensure residents have access to the new facilities.
Part of the building will be three-storey with the rest two-storey. It will be made using mostly traditional brick with a large glass section.
Tonge Cllr Frank White, the council's executive member for social inclusion, underlined the importance of the Castle Hill scheme. He said: "Together with other regeneration projects in the Tonge area, I think this represents the biggest change in Tonge Moor since the building of the original estates between the first and second world wars."
Glasgow firm Melville Dundas is to carry out the town's first Private Finance Initiative, which means developers will pay for the building and the council will buy it back over 25 years.
A group of councillors and representatives of residents groups and the school have visited the James Watt Institute of Higher Technology in Ayrshire, one of the firm's previous designs.
The scheme will involve the creation of an extra set of traffic lights along Tonge Moor Road, at the junction with Castleton Street.
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