A VISION of an elaborate £18 million plan to turn York into Spice City has won favour with tourism industry leaders.

The organiser of the Spice! Project, Jan Smithies, has been looking at York as one of a number of optional places to set up the complex which would be designed to be a recognised national centre.

So far she has been encouraged by the positive reaction she has received.

Gillian Cruddas, chief executive of the York Tourism Bureau said: "We always welcome new ideas and this seems particularly interesting. We have various national centres such as the National Centre for Early Music and the National Railway Museum, all of them superlatives. It's well worth considering."

York Archaeological Trust chief executive John Walker believes the idea would fit in well with "work on Viking relic food found by archaeologists."

Ms Smithies recognises it would be difficult to find the land in the middle of York city centre to build the dream from scratch.

She said: "York Archaeological Trust came up with a number of possible sites, but it could well be that we would have to spread it around - using conversions to create a central building plus a number of venues with the Spice! brand name elsewhere in the city.

"Did you know that cocoa is a spice? It will fit in well with chocolate city.

"We could link up with Nestl to display the whole history of cocoa."

Updated: 11:59 Wednesday, February 16, 2005