A £50 MILLION project generating up to 5,000 jobs could be on its way to York, the Evening Press can reveal today.

A consortium of business people and landowners has lodged an outline plan with City of York Council for 450,000 square feet of offices for new and growing science ventures on 26 empty acres south of Monks Cross retail park and the Ryedale Stadium.

If the plan for energy-efficient one, two and three-storey offices gets the go-ahead by Christmas, then the offices could be available for letting by November or December 2002.

The Monks Cross Science Park, which would with the council's planned park and ride scheme there, was today hailed by Anna Rooke, project manager for Science City York as "absolutely fantastic news".

She and others behind the scheme believe it will confirm York as the leading high-tech growth city in Britain.

York entrepreneur Richard Wood, the man behind the group which built the massive DEFRA building at King's Pool, York, is a key player in the consortium, Oakgate Group Plc.

Also involved in the consortium are businessman Richard France and David Sherry, who owns many of the acres. Options have already been negotiated with other landowners there.

Mr Wood said: "Quality office sites are desperately needed, otherwise York will just stagnate and there will be very little inward investment.

"This project, which I have planned for more than five years, is a real opportunity to prove our credentials as a science city to the world and will also help to relieve the pressure on growing scientific ventures which have nowhere to grow or go - except out of York."

He said the project was being backed by city planners who, following public consultation, had already recognised the need to make sites available for 19,000 new jobs up to 2021.

Architect Jim Downes, of the Thirsk-based Downes Illingsworth Partnership, said Monks Cross Science Park would be carefully laid out to minimise its impact on the environment, with extensive landscaping, limited parking, a network of cycleways and walkways, low energy buildings and managed surface water disposal.

"Public transport is heavily relied upon to sustain the new development with the major park and ride site for the Malton Road corridor immediately next door," he said.

Mr Downes predicted: "This will endorse York as the Cambridge of the North. Indeed York is outstripping Cambridge, in the area of biosciences and computer sciences."

A parallel application will be submitted for a 25,000 sq ft office block as a speculative build. "There is a huge, pent-up demand for quality hi-tech offices in the city,'' he said.

Updated: 11:27 Tuesday, August 21, 2001