Property companies are going head to head in a £500 million battle to redevelop Crawley town centre.
The centre is likely to feature a 220,000sqft John Lewis department store, 490,000sqft of mixed large and small shops, 400 homes, new office buildings and parking for 2,900 cars.
Planners predict it will draw in tens of thousands of shoppers from nearby towns including East Grinstead and Haywards Heath.
It will span almost 25 acres of previously developed land in the northern part of the town centre, off The Boulevard, currently occupied by office buildings including Crawley Town Hall and a Territorial Army centre.
Grosvenor, owned by the Duke of Westminster, and Liberty International, which owns shopping centres worth £3.9 billion across Britain, will face competition from British Land and other smaller developers.
Because West Sussex is characterised by a number of smaller towns, developers say Crawley could attract shoppers from a number of neighbouring areas if it lures big-name retailers to the scheme.
Michael Coughlin, chief executive of Crawley Borough Council, said: "This will be the biggest development since the town centre was built."
He has been leading the project since he joined the council in 2002, and said the redevelopment would lead to a rejuvenation of the town centre, bringing more shoppers into the existing County Mall, which opened 13 years ago.
Council research has predicted that surrounding towns such as East Grinstead will suffer a three per cent drop in trade but Mr Coughlin said they would still have a place providing small niche-market shops. John Abel, managing director of Liberty International's Capital Shopping Centres division, said Crawley represented a gap in the market as there were no major shopping centres around and thousands of new homes were due to be built nearby.
He said: "We would expect the new centre to complement the existing town, including the County Mall, so that the whole town is lifted into a higher realm of shopping and everybody benefits."
The plan to develop the site has been worked out by Crawley Borough Council and English Partnerships, a Government agency which aims to rejuvenate run-down towns and cities.
Property firms have until Monday to submit their applications and the council will choose the firm with the best financial backing, offering the best plan to rejuvenate the whole town centre.
The department store is scheduled to open by 2010, and the rest of the centre should be finished by 2011.
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