FORGET all those forecasts of doom and gloom where the trading situation in Bolton is concerned - all the signs are that we're going to be a boom town for shopping in the run-up to the Millennium.

Latest boost to town-centre prospects comes from the planning go-ahead that's been given to a £20 million shopping development on the former Bolton Brady site between Turton Street and Waterloo Street. Work should begin in the summer -and the creation of some 300 new jobs is a super spin-off to the sound of all those extra tills ringing and the undoubted boost this scheme should mean for the local economy.

Bolton Council deserve full marks for accepting the threat of the Dumplington shopping complex down the road as a real challenge. It's a stance that has obviously played a part in attracting the range of entertainment complexes and other projects being developed in our area.

An interesting slant to this latest shopping development is the suggestion to decorate the buildings with terracotta figures of famous Bolton folk. So when you start to pile the shopping into those trolleys, who knows, Fred Dibnah, Nat Lofthouse and Lord Leverhulme could be gazing down and watching how wisely you're spending that housekeeping.

Bolton, it seems, could well turn out to be the place where it's all happening in the first years of the new century.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.